The story, said to be based on fact, though it blasts off from that base fairly soon and fairly far, tells of the abduction of an American boy by Amazon Indians, and of his father's re-connection with him after a search of ten years. This bears a striking resemblance to the Indian Captive branch of the Western film occupied by The Searchers, Two Rode Together, et al., right down to the neighborhood rivalry between, say, the Crows and the Blackfeet, and even down to the white gun-runners willing to trade with either of them. The adventure elements of this story are quite well handled, with plot developments tied clearly and logically to ecological upsets. But as much as it is an adventure movie, it is not, apart from the obvious difficulties of the shoot, one of John Boorman's more adventurous ones. Somehow it is not surprising that yet another repentant Britisher would want to throw all his technical suavity, philosophical urbanity, and whatnot onto the side of "primitives," just as it is not surprising that he should retain all the while an active eye for naked native girls. And in its self-deceiving, self-refuting (and, incidentally, audience-pleasing) ending, the movie does not bear out its own sobering statistics. With Powers Boothe, Meg Foster, and Charley Boorman. (1985) — Duncan Shepherd