Ashanti

Director - Andrew McLaglen

Cast - Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris

Country of Origin - U.K.

Discs - 2

Distributor - Severin Films

Reviewer - Bobby Morgan

Date - 01/04/13

If you are reading this, please consider supporting Scott’s IndieGoGo Campaign to make his film Bad Reputation by clicking here!

The Film: 3/5


 

David Linderby (Michael Caine)  and his wife Anansa (Beverly Johnson) are both doctors who work for the  United Nations. Their latest assignment takes them to an African village to inoculate the villagers. While David is engaged with photographing a tribal dance Anansa decides to go skinny dipping in a nearby river.  After she emerges from the water she is kidnapped by slave traders led  by the loathsome Suleiman (Peter Ustinov) and thrown into a truck with  other enslaved men and women. Once David discovers his wife has vanished he takes every legal avenue possible to find her but finds the local  authorities are unable to help. He soon meets Bryan Walker (Rex  Harrison), an anti-slavery activist who puts him in contact with the  mercenary helicopter pilot Sandell (William Holden), and with Sandell  David formulates a plan to intercept Suleiman's party at a river. When  their efforts result in failure and the mercenary's death Walker takes  David to Malik (Kabir Bedi), a nomadic tribesman who wants revenge on  Suleiman for his role in the death of his wife and children and is the  only person who can help David rescue Anansa from the slavers' clutches  as they begin a 3,000 mile trek across the treacherous Sahara Desert. It has now become a race against time as Suleiman intends to sell Anansa  to the Saudi prince Hassan (Omar Sharif) and David must act fast and  with courage he never thought he had in him or he will lose his beloved  wife forever.


 

Ashanti is the sort of movie that made the wonderful book Reel Bad Arabs intrinsically possible. It  was made in an age when the popularity of big-budget spectacles of  globe-trotting adventure and danger was looking extremely wan with each  passing year as high-concept blockbusters like Star Wars, Jaws, and  Superman that required no movie stars to level the box office playing  field became the new standard in Hollywood. Producers like Irwin Allen  and Dino De Laurentiis continued to persist in churning out such  expensive campy dreck defiantly in the face of a shifting paradigm and  saw their influence in the film industry deteriorate as a result. The  current Republican Party seems to be following this model now as they  spiral into a bottomless pit of political irrelevancy. Since that course of action seems to be easier, and more counterproductive, than changing with the times it is no surprise why most of the Hollywood old guard  became extinct, steadfastly clinging to their old ways like they would  be soon welcomed back into the fold with heartfelt apologies and  bashfully shrugged shoulders. That did not exactly happen nor did the  era of big films built around sheer star power fade into the fog of  time; it is just that these days, with movie star salaries reaching  stratospheric heights the concept of bringing more than one together in a single film has become a rarity in the industry and only occasionally  indulged in during awards season.


 

Even if it were made today no one would mistake Ashanti for an awards contender, not even as a dark horse contender whose  chances of making it into the big contest were slimmer than a shoelace.  Even though it had one of Hollywood's finest yeoman directors at the  helm, a script concocted by writers with respectable reputations, and a  sturdy cast of global superstars with faces ready to be displayed on the official release poster Ashanti still ended up  as a glossy, overblown B-movie that would make most studio executives  throw up their hands aghast at its very sight and one of the reasons why the Razzies were created in the first place. It is trash - racist,  sexist, brainless trash no less - but then again so was Showgirls and  that flick has a bigger cult following than Jim Jones. Thus movies like Ashanti will always have almost as many defenders as they do detractors. The  film was adapted from the novel Ebano (Ebony) by the Spanish author  Alberto Vazquez-Figueroa by two very capable screenwriters - Stephen  Geller and George MacDonald Fraser. Geller's greatest accomplishments  were writing the novel that inspired the 1968 cult classic Pretty Poison and adapting Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five into the celebrated  1972 film directed by George Roy Hill, while Fraser (whose work went  uncredited) was best known as the creator of the Flashman series as well as the screenwriter for Richard Lester's international smash hits The  Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers. Lester later made a film one  of the Flashman books called Royal Flash for which Fraser wrote the  script and has become one of my favorite films of the director.


 

Sitting comfortably and compensated at the helm was  Richard Fleischer, the son of animator pioneer Max Fleischer and the  director of some very fine features since he made his first in 1946.  Fleischer's extensive resume includes the original 20,000 Leagues Under  the Sea (one of my all-time favorite live-action Disney movies), The  Vikings, Fantastic Voyage, The New Centurions, and Soylent Green. That  is not a filmography to be easily dismissed, that is until you get into  the staggeringly lesser films that made up the bulk of Fleischer's  contributions to cinema - Doctor Dolittle, Che!, Mandingo, the 1980  remake of The Jazz Singer starring Neil Diamond, and Million Dollar  Mystery - the first and only film to be produced solely as the  centerpiece of a nationwide cash giveaway contest co-sponsored by Glad  Trash Bags. Fleischer also directed Conan the Destroyer and Red Sonja,  both primarily bankrolled by De Laurentiis and both failing to live up  to the expectations created by the smash success of Conan the Barbarian. Until Marcus Nispel made his 3-D Conan movie in 2011 fans of Robert E.  Howard's legendary pulp hero did not think it was possible for the  Cimmerian warrior to look like such a charmless buffoon on the silver  screen. Even the worst of these bombs had some positively qualities,  chief among them Fleischer's workmanlike direction that at least makes  them look like movies and not pathetic practical jokes being played on  moviegoers by movie producers with far too much disposable income, but  they were hardly enough to keep them from long being considered the  absolute dregs of cinema history. Directors like Fleischer had a  difficult time finding film work as they were being respectfully elbowed out of Hollywood by the hungry young turks fresh out of the school of  commercials and music videos but still desired to remain active so they  were compelled to take directing jobs whenever they were presented,  whatever they may be. Sometimes even the dirtiest jobs need a  cool-headed professional in command. 


 

Well my friends, they tend to not come much dirtier than Ashanti. This movie takes one of the ugliest subjects imaginable - slavery,  especially as it still exists in the modern age - and turns into fodder  for an all-star exploitation flick designed to thrill and titillate and  never to engage the intellect or emotions. Quentin Tarantino's latest  film Django Unchained has been widely accused of doing just that but  mostly by people who have yet to actually see it. I have seen it however and the fundamental difference between that movie and Ashanti is that Django was made with craft, love, wit, and the pure  exhilaration of filmmaking but was never afraid to expose its audience  to the insidious, soul-crushing horrors of slavery. Ashanti, on the other hand, is low-grade garbage that had a lot of money thrown  its way in an attempt to grant it the temporary illusion of legitimacy.  It is such a mercenary endeavor that the cynical chopper pilot played by William Holden would have raised his glass of watered-down bourbon in  its honor, and the kind of ethically-compromised entertainment that  audiences around the world would finally start to groove when John Rambo went into Vietnam (played onscreen by Mexico) in 1985 to mow down  hundreds of Viet Cong and Russian troops and rescue prisoners of war for the good ol' U.S. of A. Hell, the very movie that finally made Liam  Neeson a movie star, 2009's Taken, is virtually a surface remake of Ashanti. There has been audiences hankering for these rancid hunks of greasy,  sleazy celluloid since Charles Bronson gunned down his first black  mugger - the cinema of bloodthirsty Biblical retribution. You may enjoy  it, but if you begin to see these movies as a philosophy and a way of  life you must seek immediate psychiatric help. 


 

From the moment Beverly Johnson takes her one and  only nude swim in broad daylight and is promptly snatched up and  spirited away by the evil forces of the actor who was beaten out for the role of Inspector Clouseau by Peter Sellers playing a least convincing  Arab than Rob Schneider could muster with every ounce of his so-called  "talent" Ashanti reveals itself to be a movie  that should never be taken seriously for fear of causing severe brain  damage in the poor souls who would dare attempt such folly. Michael  Caine plays his character with almost zero trace of emotion and reacts  to Anansa's kidnapping in the same way a stressed-out businessman would  when he discovers that his hotel room has not been properly fumigated  upon his arrival. Rex Harrison's character drifts in and out of his  meager scenes like the screenwriter's invention he is really but manages to display a bit more warmth and good humor than the part deserves.  Johnson is quite easy on the eyes but her acting is flat and her  attempts to show defiance in the face of her tormentors come off as the  temper tantrums of a drunk Paris Hilton. Ustinov brings little actual  menace or villainy and undercuts the potential dramatic impact of his  scenes with simpering buffoonery. How any living thing on this planet  outside of the inhabitants of an ant farm could be enslaved by this  bloated dolt is beyond me, even though he is given Arab and African  henchmen who both generate far more tension with evil grins and laughing than Ustinov could ever hope for. Unfortunately since they are both two of the most prominent characters of any ethnicity other than lily white Caucasian in the movie it does not help that they are moronic,  sex-crazed savages who would be just as home in the Antebellum South of  D.W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation as they are here. The  African Ansok is played by the gifted South African actor and playwright Winston Ntshona, who a year before appearing in Ashanti portrayed the sympathetic ousted President Limbani in the British  action classic The Wild Geese. I wonder if Ntshona considered the  predatory, pedophiliac Ansok a giant step backwards in his career. Who is to say he even had much of a choice? 


 

The parts of Ashanti that do deliver the expected cheap thrills are often nearly undone by the  filmmakers' shameless pandering to audiences. The music score by Michael Melvoin, a famed recording artist and studio musician who performed on  classic albums by the Beach Boys, Tom Waits, and the Jacksons, veers  awfully close to sounding like something that belongs in a late 70's  primetime soap opera. When you hear it for the first time you keep  waiting for the commercial breaks and a preview of the eleven o'clock  news. The relationships are never developed despite having a running  time three minutes shy of two minutes to work with: we do not get a  sense of what makes David and Anansa's marriage endure before she is  kidnapped and the besieged husband never gets to forge a bond with his  compatriot Malik. William Holden and Omar Sharif are too good as actors  to appear in what amounts to extended cameos. Holden especially because  given his profession you would think his character would have a greater  role to play in the adventure, but sadly he sticks around just long  enough to cash a quick check and dispense some surly wisdom to Caine.  Ntshona gets a pretty cool death scene when one of the female slaves  turns out to be a witch doctor who makes the sorry bastard puke  chocolate pudding before expiring horribly. When Malik tells Davis that  he will have to ride a camel you almost pray that Fleischer does not  subject us to an endless sequence where Caine has to mount the camel and continuously fall on his ass. The pitiful attempt is so hoary and  outdated - much like the entire movie, which seems like a carbon copy of a second-rate studio melodrama from the 1950's or 60's that could have  been shot on the 20th Century Fox or MGM backlots for a fraction of Ashanti's total production budget - that you can not help but chuckle at the idea that the makers of this movie not only thought the sequence was funny  but that they also figured it would have the audience in stitches. Maybe it is just me but I will never hip to the idea of seeing the great  Michael Caine subjected to comic humiliations that even Kevin James  would find too much. 


 

It is good that most of the cast escaped this  entertaining fiasco with their dignity intact. Sharif could be  effortlessly charming wandering the streets stoned in a bathrobe singing the complete works of Lee Greenwood. Bedi is the real star of the show  as the stoic Malik. Whether he is cutting a bloody swath through a band  of cutthroat slavers or confronting Caine over the fate of a group of  rescued children who will left to the mercy of the unforgiving desert  without their assistance Bedi carves out a fine portrayal of a lost soul who has become a machine fueled by hatred and vengeance. It is a  performance far too good for Ashanti and the movie is all the better for it. 


 

Audio/Video: 3/5


 

Severin presents Ashanti in a 1080p high-definition widescreen transfer in a 2.35:1 aspect  ratio. The image is pretty remarkable for a film of its age and  reputation even though it has suffered some over the decades. The colors are sharp with deep yellow and brown hues that adds additional tension  to the desert scenes with their desolate canyons and endless sand dunes  and the ocean that serves as the setting for the action-packed finale  sparkles like diamonds under the blazing sun. It is rather beautiful at  times. The only audio option is an English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono that  works very well with special attention given to the dialogue scenes and  action beats; every gunshot sounds like cannon fire. The Melvoin score,  as generic as it is, also benefits greatly from this undemanding  soundtrack. No subtitles are provided.


 

Extras: 3/5


 

Outside of a theatrical trailer the only extra to be found here is "Beverly Johnson Remembers Ashanti", a 27-minute video interview with the model-turned-actress gives us a  nice overview of her career and shares some colorful stories from her  time making Ashanti. Johnson is as lovely as she was when her career hit its stride and her observations about working  on the international production with a predominantly male cast are juicy at best and at worst of middling interest. 


 

Severin has also included a DVD copy of Ashanti in this combo pack. 


 

Overall: 3/5


 

Ashanti is the kind of movie you enjoy while watching, then regret enjoying it  once you have had time to think about it. Guilty pleasures do not come  any guiltier than this sordid bit of expensive exploitation that offers  up vast amounts of entertainment value at the expense of a brain, a  heart, and a soul, and whose expiration date was reached faster than  most gallon jugs of lowfat milk. Severin has done a terrific job giving  this antiquated relic of old school, star-driven vehicles at the dawn of the modern blockbuster age a fresh digital polish with an interesting  supplementary interview as a capper.

 

If you are reading this, please consider supporting Scott’s IndieGoGo Campaign to make his film Bad Reputation by clicking here!

 

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