March 2025

A rather pedestrian action movie. Its "message" about corruption and corporate capture of governance in Africa is made shabbily and with little nuance. Not worth watching once, much less again. I can't remember exactly why I picked it. I was bored, wanted a movie, arrived at the Wikipedia page somehow and said sure. Based on a novel by Frederick Forsyth, but if you've got time to kill, please just read his novel Day of the Jackal, which is much better entertainment.

A stirring action-romance in a pseudo-historical French setting, with sewer escapes, a headstrong young thief, cursed lovers, Rutger Hauer's preposterous double crossbow and solid shots of landscapes, medieval interiors and the villain's opulent digs. The one negative is the idiotic 80s synthesizer soundtrack, which feels equally out of place for a hermit's redoubt, crossing treacherous ice or a duel in a church.

On the subject of dragon breath, and how a character dying to that might feel the situation to be less arbitrary than dying somewhat more ... anonymously ... from the proposed system of mass-combat casualties. Such a feeling would presumably stem from how, in an ordinary (non-mass) combat, the players would control their individual characters with all the usual micromanagement: taking painstaking preparations before the battle itself, arranging the lines of defense just so, cooperating as best they could in the heat of battle... and as such, whatever the success or failure of the party's side in the dragon fight, unless the DM had truly botched things or resorted to bullshit-like fudging the players ought to generally feel like they had earned the outcome themselves.

I should have loved this book. It was recommended by a dear friend, and the elevator pitch is pure Maxwell bait: "In the 17th century, an Italian is captured by Turks and forced to work for their rulers".

But by God, the writing is dull, dull, dull. 80-90% of this slim book is the main character endlessly pontificating or having pointless arguments with the Turk who is his tutor, student, and jailer. It's not quite as bad as The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt, another mind-melting bore with a navel-gazing, daydreaming, self-hating protagonist. But it's friggin' close, and in some cases it offends more: the setup for the most predictable twist in the world is not so much telegraphed as repeatedly blasted into your face.