Africa is at stake for the Empire, and all depends the building of a bridge in a crucial location. The overlord in command in this project is Robert Beaumont (Tom Wilkinson) who lays the project open to his builder (Val Kilmer). Wilkinson has a minor role but is brilliant every second of it.
The building of the bridge is initiated, but the bridge element of the story suddenly fades and the story becomes about something else. The bridge strikes me a little like a MacGuffin. There seems to me a genre switch here. It starts as straight drama and then transforms itself into something akin to Horror. Michael Douglas is striking as a mountain-man type, wearing a cowboy hat and a long beard and talking like a hyperventilating Crocodile Dundee. What a pleasant surprise to see this performance.
When the movie was switching genres, I began to lose interest. I had to struggle to finish. The was a sudden implementation of excessively sentimental music and sappiness. The action scenes regarding the second part of the film were overlong and especially tedious. The story snowballed into something not wonderful, especially following such a promising beginning.
