Em Terreno Perigoso

OK, there are so many things wrong with this movie, I don't know where to start. I have been reading Jack Higgins for probably a decade and a half, so I am quite familiar with his work and his characters.

First off, Rob Lowe???? Good actor, bad accent. Oh, wait, I forgot, he can't do an Irish accent. Also, Sean Dillon is described as a nondescript figure, as far as his build goes. The only qualities that make him the man we love is his 'Fair, almost white hair and his pale blue eyes'. Lowe, obviously, has neither of them. Well, almost the eyes... MAYBE.

Hannah Bernstein, an intellectual Scotland Yard inspector. They got that right. However, Jack Higgins repeatedly dresses her in trouser suits.

Brigadier Charles Ferguson, always in an unkempt state, dress-wise, except for his Guards tie.

Also, the movie would've been much better had they followed the book a little more closely. The way which Ferguson and Dillon meet was in a different book altogether. And they didn't even get it right! The initial meeting of Asta and Dillon, again, not accurate. The arrangement made for reservations at Loch Dhu???? NOT EVEN CLOSE!

In other words, as a Jack Higgins fan, I was embarrassed by this movie.

ON DANGEROUS GROUND is the TV movie adaptation of a Jack Higgins novel about a secret document that allows Hong Kong to remain in British hands for another 100 years after 1997. Various factions do their utmost to get their hands on said document, so spymasters send in former IRA man Sean Dillon to do the job instead.

The premise has dated now but this is a surprisingly good thriller given that it's a TV movie. ON DANGEROUS GROUND has plenty of action scenes to recommend it although it's clear that director Lawrence Gordon-Clark (who directed those fantastic BBC ghost stories in the 1970s) is better at atmosphere building than he is shoot-outs because this is oddly unexciting despite all the hijinks going on.

Rob Lowe is an unusual choice for lead although I guess he had to be in it to sell this to overseas audiences. His character seems to be extraordinarily unlucky in this and watching all the scrapes he gets into is amusing. The supporting cast includes the dependable Kenneth Cranham and a brief but welcome turn from Jurgen Prochnow (DAS BOOT). Some of the acting is a little uneven but the story as a whole is watchable and fresh-feeling.

This film is extremely unimpressive, sorry Lawrence Gordon Clarke. I was in it too and played a bodyguard and had a fight scene with Robe Lowe, plus another scene.

I really wanted to like it, truly I did, but it is just so painful to watch.

It could have been so much better if the acting had been up to scratch. There were times on set that I thought I was witnessing children in a play ground running about shouting "Bang Bang Your'e dead"!

Very disappointing to say the least, especially as I wanted to show the film off to my friends and family because I was in it.

I tend to rate movies twice: once for technical merit and once for how much I enjoyed it. I gave On Dangerous Ground a high enjoyment rating ( I definitely enjoyed it.) but a low technical merit rating. (Some of the acting was weak and the story line was a bit difficult to track.) but I liked it!!

Rob Lowe sleepwalks through this convoluted plot, with barely a glimmer of an expression ever crossing his face. I think he was meant to be an ex-IRA man who now worked for the highest bidder, but if so he'd lost his accent along the way. Most of the cast were equally underwhelmed by their parts, but with the main Italian villain being called, in all seriousness,'Don Giovanni', this is hardly surprising. He had a German nephew - Jurgen Prochnow, who did show plenty of expression but mostly of the 'how did I get into this film?' kind - and Prochnow had a German stepdaughter from his dead wife, which made the Italian mafia link a little tenuous. The plot was merely an excuse for lots of different locations, and ultimately a pointless exercise. However, along the way the English were shown to be pinstripe suited men who hid swords in their walking sticks, the Irish all drank a lot and danced to the sound of fiddles in sawdust floored pubs and the Scots were barking mad, rolling their eyes and saying 'och aye the noo' at every possible opportunity. The Chinese were in it too, all speaking Oxford-educated style English. It's very long, which is lucky for Prochnow as it gave his hair time to turn from grey to blond. This was the most interesting thing in the movie, but it rates high for amusement, albeit of the wrong kind.