David Love The opening scene flashes between black and white and colour. Ice Cube is studying in America and has returned to South Africa at the end of apartheid. No trace of an African accent. You know this is going to be unrealistic when they refer to the USA as a cosy democracy.Here's a summary. Some of the scenery is spectacular. Camera-work is functional. Most of the acting is dire and the dialogue cringeworthy.Liz Hurley is gorgeous as always, and posh English as always. She does have the habit of answering the door to strangers while dressed in scanty underwear. I would have thought that unusual, even for a professional stripper.After Ice is carjacked he doesn't call the police. he returns to his hotel. Liz Hurley gets in touch. She's also had some problems 'Did you call the police?' asks Ice.It now turns out that Liz is Ice's brother's girlfriend as well as neighbour. But brother Stephen has gone missing. Liz now gets Ice to get her drugs. The dealer is suspicious. Meanwhile who should knock at the door? It's Stephen, but he doesn't seem pleased to see his brother.Now they head off back to Ice's hotel. I'm getting bored now, like Ice sounds when he makes those phone calls back home. The score is starting to get annoying too.Then we wind our way to the finale – predictable and dull.

bookwormgal Yes Hurley's accent gads all over the place but that is how English South Africans sound like (I should know I'm married to one).However the plot does meander all over the place, and with someone like Ice Cube and the general premise of the movie there should definitely be more action in it.Roodt should take some lessons from Hood because Tsotsi delivered on the same basic message whileas Dangerous Ground just comes off as a mildly entertaining, barely passable TV movie.While it has its good points (accurate SA visuals for the time depicted, accurate depiction of Afrikaneer thugs and black Tsotsi's) there are points where the acting needs to be taken up a notch or two. And of course the writing is so thin and predictable if it was a dress it'd be see-through.I don't think it's as horrible as the first reviewer (mainly because I have been to Johannesburg and it DOES look that old an worn-out) but agree that the writing and acting was not up to par.

Tom May This 'motion picture' is an absolute joke. It simply cannot be taken seriously; taking on the South African situation and inserting Ice Cube and Elizabeth Hurley just about sums it up. And it can't even be 'taken humorously' as the whole charade is so utterly joyless and deadly dull.This film is cliché-addled in the extreme; South Africa is presented, pretty much, as any old place; only distinguished by the occasional accent and the excessive crime rate. Any sense of reality is out of the equation, as is entertaining or useful usage of melodrama or other non-naturalistic forms. One has to laugh really; there's nothing else to do when you are presented with the posturing and faux-sincerity invested in the film by its average team of actors. But it is a hollow laugh, betraying not a jot of joy or insight.The weak storyline, which does not engage the mind on any level, is sketched out through dialogue by turns dull and absurd. As ever in 'serious' films inflected by her presence, Liz Hurley is a liability. The woman just cannot act it seems; thus, she seems more effective simply hamming up her own image in "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" and "Bedazzled". Her attempts at a South Africa accent gad around all over the globe; an embarrassingly inept effort, in truth. Yes, she 'looks good', depending quite upon one's own tastes, but it appears that that is the only reason she is here - along with her ubiquitous, 'dat skirt'-fuelled star name.So, a damn well disastrous film, and a real waste of time spent watching it.

mike_saun ``Everything was like, y'know, separated.''With this comically clumsy explanation of apartheid, an actual line from this unfortunate film, any meager hope for ``Dangerous Ground'' evaporated like a Transkei rain shower.How flawed is this film?Consider that its star, Ice Cube, utters that clunker yet is supposed to be believable as a South African exile living in the United States, a former student protest leader sent abroad as a teenager. He doesn't even attempt a credible accent, so his character, Vusi, winds up sounding straight outta South Central and not South Africa, where the film is set.His costar, Elizabeth Hurley, as the semi-exotic dancer Karin, has a peculiar habit of answering her door wearing next to nothing, despite being on the run from nefarious drug-dealing thugs from the South African underworld.Since Karin is conveniently the main squeeze of Vusi's wayward crackhead brother, also on the run from the aformentioned nasties, the pair are the unlikely salt-and-pepper buddy team that this film hangs upon. ``Hanged upon'' is probably more accurate, since there is zero rapport between the rapper and the perfume plugger.There's not much action and even less suspense, and there's an unshakable air of implausibility every time Ice Cube opens his mouth. The things that work in this film are Ving Rhames as a driven drug lord and the unintentional humor from a script that is laughably bad when it is not outright stupid. For example:Vusi's rental BMW is car-jacked, then he totals the replacement, then somehow gets another the same day?A graduate student in African studies, with no other family in America, secures $14,000 in a day to pay off his brother's crack debt?Two druggies proclaim extreme paranoia but fail to lock the door of their hotel suite?And there should be a bounty on the head of the person who penned the line ``Steven was in over his head -- but so was the country.'' South African director Darrell Roodt (``Cry, the Beloved Country'') shares part of the blame for the inept dialogue and inexplicable plot gaps as co-writer. Shame, shame, shame.