Massive Joseph E Levine international blockbuster, based on Harold Robbins novel, is quite bad, despite good people in front of and behind the camera. An example: Anne Coates edits a love scene by a swimming pool in quite an interesting way, cross cutting to the statues.. but then it's ruined by an in-out in-out emulating screwing zoom trick which is totally laughable. As is greenhouse scene and sex/torture dungeon!
When he introduces himself, it always sounds like 'I'm Deck's Anus' (it's Dax Xenos).
And in mood - it starts out as a violent revenge / revolutionary epic, but mid-way through turns into a slushy melodrama / romance, with music to match. Film is on safer ground when it sticks with Blowing Things Up, but it's massively inflated and dodgy.
Bekim Fehmiu is the lead (not as bad as rated). Alan Badel somewhat improbably plays the head of a South American country, Fernando Rey the father. With Candice Bergen, Ernest Borgnine, Rossano Brazzi, Charles Aznavour, Olivia de Havilland, Leigh Taylor-Young, Sydney Tafler.
Filmed in Colombia, New York and Rome. Photographed by Claude Renoir in Panavision.
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