Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Griff does a commendable job as amenable host sampling parts of Africa under the theme of railroads. Travel varies from riding in open ore cars in Namibia (providing his own mattress) to luxury coach to Capetown. Portions of history as well as geography are covered through the use of pleasant narration and splendid photography.Sidetrips are necessary to see various aspects of contemporary Africa yet only a fraction of the attractions are touched on. For instance in South Africa there is no mention of Vredefort Meteor Crater (worlds largest at 300 km across and two billion years old) nor Insharwalda (where the Zulu defeated the British). I would tave rather seen more of each country and less of the railway connections. It didn't include an episode of the railway through Botswana (Bulawayo to Mafikeng) perhaps account train passenger travel suspended during the filming period. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botswana_RailwaysIn the early 1980s (some by train) I had been through parts of Egypt, Sudan*, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South West Africa (now Namibia), South Africa and Mozambique*. It was interesting how some things had not changed. However I wondered if requisite bribes to get through borders still went on or that just wasn't shown.* yes during their civil wars