User Reviews

This sporadically engaging action melodrama was prepared as a feature film for television in South Africa before that internationally beleaguered nation was forced into a state of anarchy, and was aired within the United Kingdom and the United States shortly after its completion, with the action set in and about Capetown, and making appropriate use of that venue's picturesque quality in addition to its significant diamond industry. The film's graceless assembly of scenes is composed of two primary segments, thoroughly disparate in their natures. A prominent "diamond man" and corporation executive, Hendrich Van Der Byl (Bill McNaught), after being informed by his doctor that he is soon to die, bequeaths his extensive properties and other assets evenly to his son Benedict (David McCallum), daughter Tracy (Hayley Mills), along with his adopted son Johnny (Jon Cypher), with Benedict selected as new director of the firm. Unfortunately for the other two, Benedict is hungry to acquire ultimate power with the company, hoping to ingurgitate the resources left to his sister and foster brother, among these being the latter's diamond dredging craft Kingfisher. When his hopes to completely take over through guile and cunning are obviously not about to succeed, Benedict decides upon more violent means with which he may achieve his goals. The film's initial portion is the more interesting, as emotions of the three principals are undressed, but when violent action comes to the fore in the storyline, the work is converted into a routine time-passer, although the striking location of Capetown adds pictorial splendour. There are numerous sequences depicting methods by which diamond dredging from shoals is achieved, of principal interest, perhaps, solely to engineers, being simply an example of the fading fount of creativity evidenced within Roy Boulting's final screenplay. Boulting's wife, Mills, is top billed, but it is McCallum who earns acting laurels with an intense performance in this choppily cut film that is further burdened with a grating big band score contributed by John Dankworth.