Any Man's Death (1990) Reviews

• Hollywood's done it again...

  browncal2006-07-03

  I'm sorry, what was that? This film is complete rubbish? I agree, Hollywood at it's worst for many years. The acting is questionable, the music is complete and utter garbage, the lighting for the dream sequences looked like a battery powered torch, the directing is mediocre and the action sequences are pathetic. Obiously done on a low budget this film was a great plan, Geonalist gone mad after his partner is killed in a war zone, stomps off to join a African colony and live the simple life. The hero (sort of) Is sent to find him but when he does the journalist refuses and stays. So now the storyline thickens, pointless action, a good car chase through out the desert, a picnic followed by some boring romance and sex. Then some flimsy storyline about Jews and Germans and then a plane takes off. spiffying stuff. The only good scene is the car chase involving a Land Rover series 2 and an early Toyota Land Cruiser, although when the series 2 goes off a cliff, you can clearly see there is no engine, suspension or chassis. They probably had to sell them off to make a profit, as no one will want to see this. If you have the chance, do buy it, then burn it.

• hard to take seriously, and better that way

  mjneu592010-11-03

  A scruffy, semi shell-shocked journalist is sent to the Namibia/Angola frontier to locate a rogue photographer and, instead, finds a Nazi war criminal trying to cure cancer using snake venom. Neither story is developed and no effort is made to tie them together, but who cares? The guilty pleasures of such far-fetched plotting make it a difficult film to criticize, and uneven casting pushes the whole thing refreshingly close to comedy. John Savage displays all his trademark facial tics and method acting spasms; token love interest Mia Sara looks as if she stepped out of a Vogue Magazine fashion spread straight into the Kalahari Desert; and any movie featuring Ernest Borgnine as an unreformed SS officer is worth at least the cost of a bargain matinée. A neat little double-whammy resolution shows what, with some ambition, this otherwise low rent thriller might have aspired to, but the downbeat, ambiguous ending will instead doom it (not altogether fairly) to quick oblivion on the home video market.

• The least lively film ever

  Leofwine_draca2016-11-09

  ANY MAN'S DEATH is a low budget conspiracy thriller shot on the cheap in South Africa. It's about a veteran reporter who travels to Namibia to investigate the death of a respected photographer and soon discovers a dangerous conspiracy that harks back to the Second World War. While I appreciated the location photography in Namibia, ANY MAN'S DEATH is just too cheap to really work. The script is so poor that the film is full of caricatures rather than real characters and I ended up twiddling my thumbs waiting for something to happen. What's the point of going and shooting in Africa when you don't make good use of the locations? The film is helmed by veteran director Tom Clegg who did much better work with his series of SHARPE adaptations starring Sean Pertwee. The film's hero, John Savage, is wooden and dull, failing to breathe life into a dullish character. Mia Sara is given nothing to do as the token love interest. There are a couple of old timers in the cast including William Hickey and Ernest Borgnine but they're equally wasted in their parts. The whole thing is merely a waste of time and a case of treading water when instead it should be suspenseful and well-paced.