TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.
shanfloyd A quite interesting comedy about the British aristocrats in a newly-independent country of Africa. Colin Friels does a very decent job as the Mr. Leafy, the first secretary of British High Comissioner. So does Sean Connery. The screenplay has a very smart satirical flavor in it with fine sense of humor regarding royal formalities, sexual clichés and even venereal diseases.But the main problem of the movie is perhaps its ending. The ending is quite abrupt and the scene thereafter is surprisingly mundane. In fact, I don't get the idea behind all that stuff. I haven't read the original novel but seems like now I want to check it out.
aka_writer Well this movie is made to be joke and from the very beginning to the end, so it was. It is a good farce, shallow characters, obvious protogonist and antagonist and the man who learns what is right... I think it was pretty good and funny...
Africanist Don't be fooled by the "East Africa" disclaimer. This is about Nigeria, specifically Lagos at the time of the oil boom, when it was the capital. Although many names have been changed, the Yoruba thunder god, Shango, is not, nor are some of the others. There was so much humor possible in that time and place (you had to laugh just to keep from crying sometimes) that of course some of it found its way into the film. The author never understood what was happening, so of course he missed a lot, but then he made the very ignorance of the British one of the butts of his humor. God I love British humor, I envy them for it and I'm grateful to them for giving us Chaplin, Bob Hope, and so many others. But I digress. And this film is not on the level of Chaplin or Hope. I was disappointed. The biggest disappointment was watching great talents like Sean Connery, Diana Rigg and Lou Gossett sleepwalking through their roles on their way to a paycheck. They could have done better.
Paul Kotta A good example of a movie in search of a plot. What started out as an interesting premise (after all, how many movies being released are set in Africa?) becomes intolerably ridiculous with the use of an insulting (to Africans) plot device about a dead body that the locals insist cannot be moved out of fear of offending a local deity. Good actors, lousy film.
