Il settimo papiro

Duraid Al Simma (Tony Musante) and his wife Royan (Karina Lombard) are searching for the tomb of pharaoh Mamosis (Edmund Purdom). The villain Schiller (Roy Scheider) hears about it and steals their information, hoping to become the famous discoverer of the tomb himself, not to mention the great treasure supposed to be hidden there. Duraid is killed, but with the help of the adventurer Nick Harper (Jeff Fahey), his widow Royan keeps the chase for the tomb going.

This present day storyline is sharing the running time in equal parts with the events in Egypt thousands of years ago, where we learn how Mamosis wants to marry Lostris (Katrina Gibson) although she is in love with the warrior leader Tanis (Philip Rhys). A clever slave named Taita (Art Malik) helps his mistress to escape from the pharaoh while planning the tomb that our modern day heroes will search for. The link between the two storylines is the boy Hapi (Jeffrey Licon) who is the illegitimate son of Lostris, but adopted in our time by Royan due to some mystic snake god's basket travel arrangement (don't ask me how that worked).

Anyway, it a story that fills 250 minutes without too much boredom. The second of the three episodes seems to stretch the story a bit, when the heroes get captured and escape, just to be captured again and escape again. But by the third episode, when the race gets to its climax and deadly traps await the explorers, everything is fine again. This is not a masterpiece of its genre, though. There are some awful early CGI effects (the snake not really squeezing its victim's neck, the Windows 98 waterfall), some bad acting (the blonde assistant of Schiller is completely useless), some clichèd story bits and so on. But all in all, it's ok for TV entertainment and I rated it with an average 5 of 10.

Greatest and best movie I have seen for years. Excellent and exciting story, never for a second boring. Wonderful acting, Art Malik as Taita, as the scribe from ancient Egypt being the best. The film is full of emotions and happenings, the parallel way of plots in modern age plus in ancient times was done without disturbing the flow of events. Great credibility all through the film. When can I buy it on video?

I have copies of all of Wilbur Smiths books and have read and re-read them all. I decided to start finding and purchasing DVDs of movies that were made of his books to add to my library. After reading all the above critiques of the mini series on "The Seventh Scroll" and how everyone was upset with how 2 of Wilbur Smith's Egyptian series books were so horribly mangled in this mini-series. I'm going to save my money and re-read the books instead! This reminded me of how upset I was when I saw all of the James Bond movies and couldn't believe how the film industry could butcher and destroy the books written by Ian Flemming. And I certainly do not want to see any movie that mangles the GREAT works of Wilbur Smith the same way The movie and film industry did to Ian Flemming's James Bond books.

If you are a real Wilbur Smith fan, The Seventh Scroll TV mini series will probably be very hard to watch till the end. At least, for me it was. The script is way too simple; a lot of times the dialogs do not fit the character speaking, especially hapi's dialog. Besides that, the acting is unrealistic. For example, the "bad guys" at the beginning of the film look more like a caricatures then criminals. The only actor giving away some form of performance it the one playing Taita. He is probably also the one with a script closest to the text from the books.

If only a real movie director would have the courage to take on of Wilbur Smiths series and make it into one or more descent movies...

It is a truism that it takes a lot of effort to make a bad movie - this one is no exception.

I am no lover of yanks but their amazingly simplistic view of the world and their ability to reduce everything to black and white as well as make events (even fictional ones in novels) fit an agenda that bears little or no relationship to complexity of any kind is irritating in the extreme.

Wilbur Smith is descriptively verbose but weaves intricate tales that deserve more than has been delivered by this awful mishmash of a movie.

Sad really for those who will never read Smith. They will be left with a less than decent portrayal of his Egyptian series, which has to be said is gigantic in its exposition.

The Indiana Jones movies were snappy. To attempt to replicate that by manipulating Smith's novels into this production misses out by a country mile.

Pathetic except for the photography and Art Malik.