PRECIOUS FIND (1996)
A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 2003
1996 was very weird year for the fans of classic cinema, especially those who like 1940s movies. Two of important titles from that period got bizarre treatment at the hands of B-grade filmmakers and got remade as science fiction films. First one was CASABLANCA - turned into futuristic action film with Pamela Anderson in Bogey's role. Another was PRECIOUS FIND, space opera version of Huston's classic THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE directed by Philippe Mora.
The plot begins in Moon colony in the middle of 21st Century. Three adventurers - young Ben Rutherford (played by Harold Pruett), failed businessman Armond Crille (played by Rutger Hauer) and Sam Horton (played by Brion James), owner of the rusty spaceship - decide to join their meagre resources and talents in order to mine for gold in the asteroids. There they strike gold, but before they are able to turn it into cash, they must confront their own greed and utter lack of trust towards each other. To make things worse, couple of space bandits led by Loo Seki (played by Don Stroud) also want to get their hands on gold.
Having low budget is one thing, but authors of PRECIOUS FIND had their estimate of viewers' intelligence even lower. They thought that the audience would buy idea about asteroids that look exactly like a countryside two hours of drive from downtown Los Angeles - with blue skies, breathable air, growing grass, singing birds etc. The challenge to viewers' suspension of disbelief is simply too big and inexcusable in the era when CGI technology could provide some elementary special effects. This could have worked if someone wanted to make some kind of silly science fiction parody, but director Philippe Mora took serious approach. And because of that great actors like Rutger Hauer or Brion James had one of the most embarrassing titles in their filmographies.
RATING: 1/10 (--)
Review written on January 17th 2003
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in Croatian http://www.purger.com/users/drax/reviews.htm - Movie Reviews in English http://www.ofcs.org - Online Film Critics Society
========== X-RAMR-ID: 33887 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 834335 X-RT-TitleID: 1074370 X-RT-AuthorID: 1307 X-RT-RatingText: 1/10
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews