Aquila rossa

So a film 25 years ago about internecine and externally abetted intrigue in Nagorno-Karabakh, between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which has certainly been in the news recently.

With a love triangle plus baby worked in.

The topic reminds me of the 1994 Before the Rain or the equally excellent 1998 Savior about the Balkans but short of those.

The ending seems implausible.

Firstly, I'm a huge James Bond fan. Therefore, I'd die for an action movie with Bond star, and especially Timothy Dalton. But not only that makes this film very good - it has good story, very good play, great actors (Timothy Dalton ! Omar Shariff !), and a strong production - yes, there could be good moves even with that budget ! And, sometimes filming locations will play deja-vu with you - "hey, isn't it a Living Daylights ???".

From the beginning you start wondering who is the father of Kate's child. The answer eventually becomes clear but is never satisfactory. The real father almost denounces it, claiming he is only the biological father. It's an interesting love triangle with tremendous complications to an intimate companionship in the beginning getting all mixed up with her two men both being involved in politics - she is caught between two fires, one worse than the other, and one would think that the doctor would have some objections against killing people, while he just keeps looking on when the villain (Jurgen Prochnow) runs amuck with his sadism into inhuman atrocities. The weakness in this film is in the story. Ken Follett wrote some very good books, but here there are some very disturbing biases. There are no nuances to the cynical villain Jurgen Prochnow, the village imam is also depicted as thoroughly inhuman, the mercenaries are mercenaries and not human at all, while all the sympathies have to be with the mountain people and villagers. Timothy Dalton is always good, he was best as Heathcliff in the 1970 film of "Wuthering Heights", but then he was lost in the hard-boiled Bond business. The most interesting performance is maybe by Omar Sharif, although he appears late, but his role is outstanding. The music is also excellent, while actually my only objection against the film is in Ken Follett's book.

They must have run out of dialogue with the ending. And why oh why cast an actor with a obvious thick British accent play an American. The only good thing about this flick was Tim Dalton.

I must admit, I started watching the movie only because I am from Luxembourg and I was curious about how and especially where they had done it. Well, after a few seconds I realized that it might not be what the description said. After an hour or so, I really wanted to stop watching it, but I could not turn off, still hoping that there might be one or two scenes coming that they shot in Luxembourg. So I really watched the entire movie, in which I found no Timothy Dalton to be called "Bond-like" and nobody else that could have saved the movie. So, whoever wrote the first comment, maybe he or she saw a different movie, as far as I am concerned, it was not worth the hours I spent watching it.