SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

moonspinner55 Sloppy comic book adventure from Robin Cook's bestseller. Female Egyptologist in Cairo, a nervous ninny prone to screaming, is under investigation by a member of the United Nations after witnessing the murder and robbery of an art dealer; he follows her to Luxor, where she believes a tomb at the Valley of the Kings holds a legendary treasure. Despite a great deal of production expense and travel (not to mention Michael J. Lewis' booming, over-dramatic score), the spiritless film fails to function as a sand-swept travelogue, and it's too silly and annoying to work as a thriller. In the leads, Lesley-Anne Down and Frank Langella are an enervating pair. Sir John Gielgud has a little fun in a cameo role, and he exits far too soon. *1/2 from ****

JohnHowardReid A great piece of skulduggery and high adventure, set against the authentic and fascinatingly exotic backgrounds of Cairo and Luxor, Sphinx also boasts some equally fabulous interior settings (filmed in Budapest) that make a perfect match. In fact, here's a movie that would seem to have all the vital escapist elements for a smash success, including its basis on a bestseller by an "in" novelist, its interesting cast, its award-winning director (even if he is a little too inclined to over-use close-ups that undermine the conviction of some of the performances), great camera-work, terrific music score, plus $14 million worth of dazzling production values. Yet Sphinx failed to top even the $1 million mark in worldwide rentals. Why did the critics hate it? Why did moviegoers give this flick the flick? Perhaps the heroine, although superbly played by Lesley-Ann Down, was seen as too eager, too liberated for either male or female picturegoer identification? Or perhaps the mass audiences just won't accept a girl – any girl – as an action lead in the cinema? On TV, no problem. People leave their critical faculties dormant if the show is ostensibly free. (Perhaps that's why TV's Wonder Woman chalked up such high ratings?) Maybe the movie's plot was regarded as too facile and contrived? Maybe what the critics said about the characters being both too enigmatic and too one-dimensional hit home (even though audiences don't usually care a damn what critics say – and it didn't stop people from buying and reading the novel)? Perhaps the background was too authentic, the recreation of the real Egypt too meticulous? Or maybe it was simply that by 1981, Egyptian curse pictures had had their day, so that even a superior story like this Sphinx could make no box office headway?

Lee Eisenberg OK, so we should all know by now that any westerner who sticks even a hair strand into an Egyptian tomb is forever cursed. So many movies have dealt with this that another one hardly registers. "Sphinx" consists mostly of Lesley-Anne Down shrieking whenever something unpleasant happens (and with how she was dressed - without a veil - the people in Egypt would have taken her for a prostitute). I couldn't tell whether or not Frank Langella's character was supposed to be Arab or white: he had an Arab name but looked and talked like a Euro-American. And then John Gielgud plays an Egyptian man; was it still acceptable to cast white people as non-white people by this point? For the record, the title statue only appears in one or two scenes.I should say that the movie isn't terrible. I learned some interesting stuff about archeology. But a far cooler movie in this genre is the Charlton Heston movie "The Awakening". This one is the sort of movie that you rent if there's absolutely nothing else to rent. I read that director Franklin J. Schaffner (most famous for "Planet of the Apes", "Patton", "Papillon" and "The Boys from Brazil") ended his career on a down-slide; with this sort of movie, I can see why. Also starring John Rhys-Davies (Sallah in the Indiana Jones movies) and Victoria Tennant (Steve Martin's first wife; she co-starred with him in "All of Me" and "L.A. Story").Not that this is really related, but I wanted to talk about this movie getting released through Warner Bros. When I was little, I always associated WB with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc. Had I known then that the studio also released this movie - plus horror movies like "The Exorcist", "The Pack", "The Shining" and "The Nesting" - I probably would have asked something like "Why did Bugs Bunny make a bunch of scary movies?" This movie however, is not scary.

Jonathon Dabell The Robin Cook novel "Coma" had already been turned into a pretty successful movie in 1978. A couple of years later it was the turn of another Robin Cook bestseller to get the big screen treatment , but in the case of "Sphinx" virtually everything that could go wrong does go wrong. This is a dreadful adventure flick consisting of wooden performances, stupid dialogue, unconvincing characters and leaden pacing. The only reason it escapes a 1-out-of-10 rating is that the Egyptian backdrop provides infinitely more fascination than the story itself. Hard to believe Franklin J. Schaffner (of "Patton" and "Planet Of The Apes") is the director behind this debacle.Pretty Egyptologist Erica Baron (Lesley Anne-Down) is on a working vacation in Cairo when she stumbles across the shop of antiques dealer Abdu-Hamdi (John Gielgud). Hamdi befriends Erica and is impressed by her enthusiasm and knowledge. Consequently, he shows her a beautiful and incredibly rare statue of Pharoah Seti I that he is keeping secretly in his shop. The very existence of the statue arouses intense excitement in Erica, for it could provide vital clues in locating Seti I's long-lost tomb, a prize as great as the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. Before Hamdi can tell Erica any more he is brutally murdered in his shop, with Erica watching in silent terror as he meets his grisly end. Afraid yet tantalised by what she has seen, Erica attempts to track down the treasure. She finds herself helped and hindered in her quest by various other parties, none of whom are truly trustworthy. For one there is Yvon (Maurice Ronet), seemingly a friend but perhaps a man with sinister ulterior motives? Then there is Akmed Khazzan (Frank Langella), an Egyptian for whom Erica feels a certain attraction but who may also be hiding dangerous secrets from her.The biggest problems with "Sphinx" generally result from its total disregard for plausibility. Down couldn't be less convincing as a female Egyptologist – one assumes she would be quite well-educated and resourceful, yet she spends the entire film screaming helplessly like some busty bimbo from a teen slasher flick. On those rare occasions that she actually isn't running from a potential villain, she does other brainless things such as taking Polaroid flash photos in a 4,000 year old tomb! The plot twists are heavy-handed to say the least, mainly comprising of revelations and double-crosses that can be predicted well in advance. One can't even try to enjoy the film on the level of dumb but entertaining action fare, because the pacing is awfully sluggish. What little action can be found is separated by long stretches of tedium. A famous review of the movie declared: "Sphinx stinks!" Never before has a 2-hour film been so aptly summed up in 2 words.