Lewis Gilbert had some great films to his name (e.g You Only Live Twice, Alfie, Sink the Bismarck!) when he signed up for this three hour all-star epic. Alas, the director came completely unstuck trying to film this Harold Robbins novel, and a hugely talented cast also sank with him amid permissive sex and violence, soap opera-like dialogue, hopelessly over-busy plotting, and general excess. The Adventurers is a famous film, but for mainly the wrong reasons. And anyone wishing to see it for curiosity value (after all, don't we all guiltily enjoy seeing good actors in trouble?) needs to be warned: at nearly three hours, this doesn't even have the saving grace of being brief junk.
The action centres around the fictitious South American country of Corteguay, where corruption and revolution seem to be high on the agenda. Dax Xenos (Bekim Fehmiu) grows up amid the chaotic history of his country, witnessing terrible atrocities from an early age, emerging into manhood as a wealthy and handsome playboy. He leaves behind his troubled past and lives a jet-set lifestyle in Europe, marrying the beautiful Sue Ann Daley (Candice Bergen). However, events conspire to bring him back to war-torn Corteguay - his wife miscarries a baby and eventually becomes a lesbian; his father is killed; yet another revolution brews. Dax returns to his troubled home nation and, amid carnage and combat, he seeks revenge on the man who raped and murdered his mother when Dax when just a boy.
Gilbert the director is usually a tasteful and thoughtful film-maker, but here the sensationalism inherent in the story has got the better of him. The film is not memorable for its performances nor its story but for its unsavoury aspects. The violence, the nudity, the killings, the rape, the vengeance and the macho posturing dominate the story without developing it in any way. Fehmiu is too wooden an actor to hold the film together, and his limitations are cruelly exposed by the dazzling array of talent surrounding him. Ernest Borgnine, for instance, as the revolutionary bandit Fat Cat steals his scenes, and Candice Bergen is good in a difficult role, but Fehmiu sails through it all with barely a credible expression on his face. This might've won some fans as a misunderstood cult film if it were an hour briefer, but at virtually three hours it becomes an impossible task to enjoy it and an effort of willpower to sit through it.
The action centres around the fictitious South American country of Corteguay, where corruption and revolution seem to be high on the agenda. Dax Xenos (Bekim Fehmiu) grows up amid the chaotic history of his country, witnessing terrible atrocities from an early age, emerging into manhood as a wealthy and handsome playboy. He leaves behind his troubled past and lives a jet-set lifestyle in Europe, marrying the beautiful Sue Ann Daley (Candice Bergen). However, events conspire to bring him back to war-torn Corteguay - his wife miscarries a baby and eventually becomes a lesbian; his father is killed; yet another revolution brews. Dax returns to his troubled home nation and, amid carnage and combat, he seeks revenge on the man who raped and murdered his mother when Dax when just a boy.
Gilbert the director is usually a tasteful and thoughtful film-maker, but here the sensationalism inherent in the story has got the better of him. The film is not memorable for its performances nor its story but for its unsavoury aspects. The violence, the nudity, the killings, the rape, the vengeance and the macho posturing dominate the story without developing it in any way. Fehmiu is too wooden an actor to hold the film together, and his limitations are cruelly exposed by the dazzling array of talent surrounding him. Ernest Borgnine, for instance, as the revolutionary bandit Fat Cat steals his scenes, and Candice Bergen is good in a difficult role, but Fehmiu sails through it all with barely a credible expression on his face. This might've won some fans as a misunderstood cult film if it were an hour briefer, but at virtually three hours it becomes an impossible task to enjoy it and an effort of willpower to sit through it.