Monday, October 09, 2006
And another
I can't remember now what possessed me to rent Lion of the Desert. I think I read an article that referred to Omar Mukhtar, of whom I'd never heard, and I was curious. Considering the length of the movie, I would have been better off reading a book. Speaking of the length, the IMDb reports it as 173 minutes, but the DVD says 206. I can't vouch for which is correct; all I can say is that it felt like it went on for about a week. Then again, Mukhtar, the "Lion of the Desert", fought the Italians for 22 years.
The movie, ineptly directed by Moustapha Akkad, best known as the producer of the Hallowe'en series, cost $35 million to make and grossed about $1 million. That ought to tell you something. I'm not sure where the money went - a lot of the battle scenes are pretty cheesy. I would have guessed some went on Oliver Reed's bar bill, but according to Akkad's commentary, he was well behaved. His performance is also pretty restrained by his standards, and the same goes for Rod Steiger as Mussolini. Anthony Quinn, in the title role, is actually quite good, and brings whatever dignity that this deeply cliched movie has.
Unfortunately, it has all the flaws of a big "international cast" epic - not the least of which is the silliness of an actor like John Gielgud playing an Arab who sounds exactly like John Gielgud. The score by Maurice Jarre is dreadful: I think he just took snippets of his other scores and spliced them together.
Finally, this movie does not get the "no animals were harmed" sticker. I'm afraid a lot of horses died in this desert.
The movie, ineptly directed by Moustapha Akkad, best known as the producer of the Hallowe'en series, cost $35 million to make and grossed about $1 million. That ought to tell you something. I'm not sure where the money went - a lot of the battle scenes are pretty cheesy. I would have guessed some went on Oliver Reed's bar bill, but according to Akkad's commentary, he was well behaved. His performance is also pretty restrained by his standards, and the same goes for Rod Steiger as Mussolini. Anthony Quinn, in the title role, is actually quite good, and brings whatever dignity that this deeply cliched movie has.
Unfortunately, it has all the flaws of a big "international cast" epic - not the least of which is the silliness of an actor like John Gielgud playing an Arab who sounds exactly like John Gielgud. The score by Maurice Jarre is dreadful: I think he just took snippets of his other scores and spliced them together.
Finally, this movie does not get the "no animals were harmed" sticker. I'm afraid a lot of horses died in this desert.
# posted by Stephen @ 1:32 a.m. 
