Terra senza pietà

This movie will keep you watching to the end, but unfortunately it ends up feeling like just another gangsta movie. They touched on the problems of South Africa but ultimately this story could have been set almost anywhere. The South Africa setting is just incidental. The lines between good & bad are too easily drawn - the characters seem 1 dimensional at times. Different and interesting, but ultimately unfulfilling in some ways.

Enjoyed the film, although nothing to write home about, and actually thought Liz Hurley played her part well, although I don't like her very much.

I know a little Zulu and one scene fascinated me. It was at a funeral in the kraal of Ice Cube's family. He is supposed to be a Xhosa (ko-sa), but I swear the others were speaking in Zulu. I may be wrong, but if right, this is extremely amusing as the Zulus and Xhosas tend to start killing each other from the age of around twelve!

I wondered why, when they were supposed to be at a funeral, they seemed to be laughing, perhaps they saw the funny side. :-)

If I am right, then the producer and director ought to be shot for employing zulu actors playing Xhosa people, yet speaking Zulu.

A movie set in South Africa, that started off, promising much, but ended with you feeling maybe you should get more for your money. The acting was not bad, but the plot was a bit thin, and sometimes a little unrealistic. Ice Cube plays an American gone to South Africa after the death of his father, where his family informs him about his brother who has gone missing. Here he meets up with his brother's girlfriend played by Liz Hurley, who is heavily into heroin. They then set about finding his brother, which includes Shooting people, blowing things up, blah, blah, blah. After a while it all gets a bit predictable.

``Everything was like, y'know, separated.''

With this comically clumsy explanation of apartheid, an actual line from this unfortunate film, any meager hope for ``Dangerous Ground'' evaporated like a Transkei rain shower.

How flawed is this film?

Consider that its star, Ice Cube, utters that clunker yet is supposed to be believable as a South African exile living in the United States, a former student protest leader sent abroad as a teenager. He doesn't even attempt a credible accent, so his character, Vusi, winds up sounding straight outta South Central and not South Africa, where the film is set.

His costar, Elizabeth Hurley, as the semi-exotic dancer Karin, has a peculiar habit of answering her door wearing next to nothing, despite being on the run from nefarious drug-dealing thugs from the South African underworld.

Since Karin is conveniently the main squeeze of Vusi's wayward crackhead brother, also on the run from the aformentioned nasties, the pair are the unlikely salt-and-pepper buddy team that this film hangs upon. ``Hanged upon'' is probably more accurate, since there is zero rapport between the rapper and the perfume plugger.

There's not much action and even less suspense, and there's an unshakable air of implausibility every time Ice Cube opens his mouth. The things that work in this film are Ving Rhames as a driven drug lord and the unintentional humor from a script that is laughably bad when it is not outright stupid. For example:

Vusi's rental BMW is car-jacked, then he totals the replacement, then somehow gets another the same day?

A graduate student in African studies, with no other family in America, secures $14,000 in a day to pay off his brother's crack debt?

Two druggies proclaim extreme paranoia but fail to lock the door of their hotel suite?

And there should be a bounty on the head of the person who penned the line ``Steven was in over his head -- but so was the country.'' South African director Darrell Roodt (``Cry, the Beloved Country'') shares part of the blame for the inept dialogue and inexplicable plot gaps as co-writer. Shame, shame, shame.

Starts off nice, but later on becomes an typical American movie with drugs, guns and you even forget that the movie takes place in Africa. If it wasn't for the charming Elizabeth Hurley i would have shut off the TV. This Vusi guy comes back to his home in South Africa blah blah shoots some people smoke some heroin hits some white guys(I was kind of sad i wanted them to kick his fat ass) and the movie ends. Don't bother to see this movie.