This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

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".

I recently had the pleasure of watching this movie at a friend's house and let me tell you, it sucks major cock. Rutger Hauer's filmography is like an avalanche. Start out with something decent like "BladeRunner" and then roughly ten years later star in a cut and paste mess known as "Beyond Justice". Of course the movie should be called "Beyond Saving" because let's face it, if you sit through this crap you're brain dead. Me and my buddy managed to get through about 57 minutes, and then once we realized we didn't have the damnedest idea what was going on, we fast-forwarded to the last 11 minutes where in the aftermath of a huge shootout the previous hunter/hunted characters had come together in an effort to fight a larger enemy. I was able to extrapolate the entire plot from the last hour without having watched it. And just a quick aside on the box art for the DVD: Putting the heads of all the characters and adding swirlies all around them makes it look like a collection of Twilight Zone episodes.Anyhow, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say anyone who picks up the box and looks at the DVD case is probably going to leave with about as much understanding of the film as I did, and I actually watched most of it. So do yourself and track down every copy and burn it in a pyre that we can all dance around like magic wood nymphs.

A rich, bossy executive's son is kidnapped by her ex-husband, an arab who has been warned to return to his people or face the consequences, which could include her death. When he and the boy arrive at the settlement of his father, the Emir (Omar Sharif), he is informed that, because he has been a bad boy who transgressed against his society's precepts, he will be bypassed and his son, now thirteen, will eventually rule the Emir's people. Meanwhile, the frantic mother (Carol Alt, looking quite elegant) has been put in touch with a specialist in "dirty" operations (Rutger Hauer), who agrees, for a price, to rescue the boy from the Emir's clutches. At this point, the movie begins to slow down as Hauer and his associates penetrate the Emir's lair. There's a lack of imagination and flair to the filming. They just crunch it out. One gets tired of seeing people diving off camels or rolling down sand dunes after they get shot. The film score sounds as if it were written for some other, equally pedestrian movie. And just when you think everything is about to be tied up in a neat package, there's a twenty-minute coda of more gunplay. When you run out of dialogue or plot twists, get out those AK-47s. Does the father pay for his "crime"? Does the kid get saved? Does the Emir say "It is written....?" Does Hauer end up with Alt? Have you ever seen a movie?

If you are a big fan of Rutger Hauer you might even *enjoy* this movie, otherwise, don't spend your time on this one. The music is awful and so are the action scenes, if you want to see Rutger's action film i recommend seeing rather split second or arctic blue.