…SPHINX! Sorry, I just couldn’t resist that groaner of a punch line which is paraphrased from an old BEANY & CECIL cartoon. But it’s true. This movie had the potential to be really good but it falls flat on a number of levels. Director Franklin J. Schaffner began his career with THE STRIPPER, reached high points with the original PLANET OF THE APES, PATTON, and PAPILLON, and wound up his career with a series of DOA movies including the lamentable YES, GIORGIO with Luciano Pavarotti. SPHINX was one of those late films and it shows that he was clearly running out of gas. This is essentially a B movie on an A budget, the type of movie that Hammer Films could have cranked out (and did, see BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB) at 2/3 the length with a lot more tension and atmosphere.
SPHINX is too long, the editing is lackluster, and it can’t make up its mind what it wants to be. Action-adventure, mystery thriller, travelogue, exotic romance, SPHINX has all these elements but only succeeds in the travelogue department. Lesley-Anne Down can be a fine actress but her character is as inconsistent as the film which is the fault of John Byrum’s screenplay. One moment she’s LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER and the next she’s a damsel in distress straight out of THE PERILS OF PAULINE. Her haircut and the color of her hair are singularly unfortunate. Frank Langella is his usual professional self and lends just the right touch of understated eroticism to his role. English thespians John Gielgud, John Rhys-Davies, and Martin Benson add sorely needed color to the slowly paced proceedings.
The story is based on a novel from once popular author Robin Cook (COMA). While the title SPHINX immediately makes us think of the famous monument, it’s also a reference to the riddle that Lesley-Anne Down’s character must solve in order to discover the hidden treasure. A brief synopsis has Egyptologist Erica Baron (Down) in Egypt to do a thesis on an Ancient Egyptian architect. There she inadvertantly gets mixed up in the black market for Egyptian antiquities and turns to UN antiquities advisor Akmed Khazzan (Langella) for help. Actually she has no choice as he’s following her for reasons of his own. This leads to a series of incidents, lots of beautiful Egyptian scenery, and a finale that has some elements of surprise but not enough to make up for what the movie lacks overall. Still I enjoyed SPHINX and, from the number of other highly positive reviews, so did a lot of other people. Just not for the same reasons.
The Capsule Critic 