When their plane makes a forced landing in the wooded mountains of Iraq, three b-movie types find themselves at the mercy of a charming, but thoroughly evil Nazi-loving ruler of a population of Satan worshipers living in British-run Iraq. Will our two heroes and heroine survive to tell about their ADVENTURE IN IRAQ?
This lame-o remake of the entertaining George Arliss movie, The Green Goddess, can be enjoyed on a certain kinetic level, if one's sensibilities do not object to the depiction of Iraqis as being devoted to the worship of Satan, and one does not mind a hero who seems to believe that what most people need is a punch in the snout. The thing, like most Warners movies, is very briskly paced, which means that events can be silly or senseless, but they are rarely boring.
But, the problem is, there is not much to like in the leads (one guy is a drunk, for no particular reason, the other guy thinks he's John Wayne and Jimmy Cagney combined, and the gal is cute, competent, and forgettable). But the best illustration on what's gone wrong in this remake is the change in villain from first lead George Arliss (a genuine great actor) to fourth lead Paul Cavanagh (charisma free actor trying desperately not to yield to the ham acting the script cries for). Cavanagh gets plenty of screen time, but he comes across as someone trying to play Tod Slaughter playing a black-hearted Victorian villain, and not quite getting there.
So, one spends a lot of time while watching this film marveling on the insults being dispensed on the Iraqi people and Iraq from folks who clearly know little about it, and could care less. One could almost think some of those folks helped advise W in developing his foreign policy. Because the movie, and Bush's first four years of war have the same level of callous incompetence about it.