Beyond Justice (1992)

This movie is about a boy who is kidnapped by this father and returned to his Arab kingdom where his father claims the boy will be the new heir to the tribe. I have watched a lot of "B" movies before, and can usually find some redeeming value in them, but this movie, I had to stop after 45 minutes or so. The performances were so awful, and yet some reviewers said it was the best performance of each actor's career. I don't understand that at all. I am sad that Eliott Gould would have given such a terrible performance. I expect it from Rutger Hauer. He's done some stinkers over the years, and some good films. I thought Gould was better than that. Actually, it is like each actor is reading their lines from a teleprompter as if each were told at the outset, "read your lines in the most monotone voice possible". Rutger Hauer is kidnapped at gunpoint, beaten, taken before the child's mother, and immediately agrees to find the kid. I really feel like I wasted part of my life on this movie and I deeply regret it. It sucks!!!!!

Think about all the lives lost in this movie. For what? The kid who's kidnapped by his own father winds up back with his Mom after the father has a change of heart. Really? And the grandfather Emir who engineered the whole thing just shrugs it all off and let's the kid make his own decision at the end of the story.Obviously someone must have thought all of this was a good idea because Omar Sharif and Elliott Gould signed on to back up Rutger Hauer and Carol Alt in this desert adventure. Hauer portrays mercenary Tom Burton, hired by business executive Christine Sanders (Alt) to rescue her son after he's whisked off to Morocco by her ex (Kabir Bedi). As an actress, Alt is one fantastic model, and virtually every scene with her in it is constructed basically to show off her fine legs. The kid playing her son must have been some kind of studio political appointment because he can't act and his demeanor never matches the situation he's in.There are a couple of interesting bits here. That huge poster of Bogart in "Casablanca" simply overwhelmed that early scene at the Moroccan airport, and this has got to be the latest I've ever seen a horse brought down by a trip wire (even though it looks like someone bashed it with a machine gun) during late battle action. If made in the U.S., the PETA folks would have been all over this one. But you know when I became convinced this was a clunker? At one point, Rutger Hauer's character actually comes out with the line - "Go ahead, make my day".

The first time I saw this movie I was on a bus in Mexico. It was a sweltering 110 degrees, the air conditioner was broken, and I was battling amoebic dysentery. When this movie came on, my world changed. Elliot Gould, Omar Sharif, and others give breathtaking performances as the kidnapped American child is reclaimed by an unorthodox hero. 15,000 dead Morroccans later, the child is rescued and brought swiftly back to his mother. For those two hours, I forgot about my perils in a foreign land and simply enjoyed the show. This film take you to the edge of your seat, doing the wave with your friends, and sharing the beauty of one of the most wondrous creations to grace the silver screen. Bravo.

The synopsis on the video box hardly do any sort of justice to this movie, depicting it as more of a regular kidnapping story where a mother hires a rather unorthodox agent to trail her strange husband. But this movie has none of that. Filmed in Morroco, it is more like a modern tale of adventure in the deserts of Morroco complete with sword fights and camel rides. A rich woman's husband, son of a Morrocan Prince, takes their son to Morroco with plans to live in grandfather's palace. While the grandfather declares the grandson heir to the throne and prepares him for living in the Holy Land and ridding himself of the life he once knew, the woman hires a few men (including Rutger Hauer) to get her grandson back. And it turns out to be a very dangerous mission. This is a fantastic adventure film, though a pretty violent one, since it's a deadly mission and one that, although the main premise involves a kidnapping, continues on to involve all sorts of wild intrigue including that of a feuding Morrocan tribe. It seems so unusual because it is an ancient tale told in a modern setting when the family is taken away from their modern conveniences into a highly hostile desert scenery with completely different customs and culture. These Italian filmmakers have given us something that I would less consider an action movie and more of an adventure tale. I would definitely recommend this movie if you're in the mood for something really different.