There have been far too few mainstream films set in post-colonial Africa, and the ones that have are a mixed bunch. This one, with its altruistic pretensions to expose slavery in the 1970s, shows the best and worst values of Africa, which turn out not to be too different to the values of humanity as a whole. It also has shortcomings, given the undue influence of western pre-conceptions of Africans and, especially, Arabs.
Dr Anansa Linderby, the beautiful African-American wife of the English doctor David Linderby, is captured by Arab slave-traders, along with a teenage Sanufu girl and a young boy. The lead slave-trader, Suleiman, is every bit the stage Arab, with his flowery and sometimes humorous rhetoric, and gestures to match - which would not be out of place on "Carry On Follow that Camel" but are not up the standard this film deserves. Peter Ustinov of course had more than enough skills to address some of the shortcomings of the script, and he rescued what could otherwise have been a woeful one-dimensional character.
Continuing the stereotypical theme, all three of Suleiman's Arab employees are unintelligent and one has paedophilic tendencies towards the boy, which thankfully are not portrayed on the screen.
One of David's first ports of call is the local police officer, a stereotypical pompous and incompetent African bureaucrat. David then meets two stereotypical white ex-pats, an Englishman (Walker, played by Rex Harrison) and an American (Sandell, played by William Holden). Sandell is a mercenary with "conventional" views on mixed-race relationships, who initially refuses to help unless David provides payment up front. Won over by David's love for Anansa, and conscious of his own inability to find love, he agrees to take David up in his helicopter to help search for Anansa. They find Suleiman and his captives crossing the border and are unable to pursue them into the neighbouring territory - as a result of Sandell's hesitation and David's lack of experience with firearms, his helicopter is shot down but David survives.
We then see David introduced to Malik (Kabir Bedi), an African who has lost his family to Suleiman and is now only driven by vengeance. They find the Sanufu girl with a group of Tuareg and know they are on the right track to find Suleiman.
In one of the most heart-rending scenes they kill a party of slave traders only to find that it was not Suleiman's group, and have no choice but to send their captives to the Tuaregs they met earlier.
Later on we discover that the young boy who had been raped is a witch doctor and, in an excellent scene with supernatural overtones, he uses his knowledge to kill one of Suleiman's henchmen. Anansa on her part - and despite the scepticism of the boy - manages to engineer the demise of Suleiman's two other employees.
By this time Suleiman and his slaves are within days of reaching the slave market.
Suleiman, now in no doubt that Anansa is "trouble", attempts to sell her to an obscenely wealthy Arab prince (Omar Sharif) who is corrupt but intelligent. On discovering that Anansa is an American working for the U.N., the prince rather unwisely decides to carry on with the bargaining without considering the consequences. The scene where the two men haggle is one of the best in the film.
At the slave market, the young boy is sold to a middle-aged German paedophile, and we are left to guess whether the boy will still be considered "wunderbar" when his owner is on the receiving end of his witch-doctoring skills.
David and Malik finally confront Suleiman and there is a bitter-sweet ending from Malik's point of view.
Ultimately, David and Anansa are re-united, and Malik, whose life is in ruins, can console himself with having seen the task he set himself completed.
The overall plot of the film is excellent but it loses marks for its stereotypical portrayal of nearly all the leading characters. Credit must go to all the leading actors for addressing many of the shortcomings of the scripting.

For those of you who've never heard of it (or seen it on A&E), Cracker is a brilliant British TV show about an overweight, chain-smoking, foulmouthed psychologist named Fitz who helps the Manchester police department get into the heads of violent criminals. It's considered to be one of the finest shows ever to come out of England (and that's saying something), and was tremendously successful in England and around the world back in 1993.
Now, the original stars have re-teamed with the original writer to knock out one more 2-hour episode. I've loved this show ever since I'd first seen it, over a decade ago. The DVD box set holds a place of honor in my collection, and I can quote a good deal of Fitz's interrogation scenes practically word for word. The idea of Robbie Coltrane reteaming with Jimmy McGovern for another TV movie about Fitz filled me with absolute glee.
I'll start with the good. One of the many things that impressed me about the original Cracker series was how quickly Fitz was defined as a character. Five minutes into the first episode  with his lecture (throwing the books into the air), his drinking, and his cussing of the guy after him on the gambling machine queue  and you knew, simply knew, who this character was. You could feel him "clicking" in your mind, the kind of click that only happens when a great actor gets a great role written by a great writer.
Coltrane, of course, remained great throughout the show, but I always felt that some of the later episodes  those not written by McGovern  mistreated the character.
So the good news is this: Fitz is back. As soon as you see him in this show  making incredibly inappropriate comments at his daughter's wedding  you'll feel that "click" once again. It's him: petulant one moment and truly sorry the next, always insightful, sincere to the point of tactlessness but brilliantly funny in the process. If you love this character as much as I do, you'll be delighted with how he is portrayed in the movie. And this extends to Judith and Mark: in fact, everything having to do with the Fitzs is handled perfectly.
The problem I do have with this movie revolves around the crime Fitz is trying to solve. In standard Cracker fashion, we know exactly who the criminal is in the first five minutes  the suspense lies in seeing Fitz figure it out. In this case, we have a serial killer who is out for American blood. And the reason for this, unfortunately, is not due to any believable psychological trauma  rather, it seems that the murders are here simply to allow the writer to display his personal political beliefs.
It's difficult for me to write this, as I truly believe that Jimmy McGovern is one of the greatest writers in the world. Nor do I have a problem with movies that are about current issues, or movies that take a political stand. But in the Cracker universe, we expect to see the characters behaving like human beings, not like caricatures. Instead, the Americans in this movie are all depicted in an entirely stereotypical fashion. They're know-nothing loudmouths who complain about everything, treat the locals like crap and cheat on their wives  one of them even manages to do all of the above within less than 5 minutes. I honestly thought I'd mistakenly switched channels or something.
But it doesn't stop there. We get constant reminders of just how badly the war in Iraq is going  reminders that have nothing whatsoever to do with the story and appear practically out of nowhere. The killer is so busy ranting about how Bush is worse than Hitler that he almost forgets to get on with the killing; but more to the point, he is such a mouthpiece for the writer's political views that he forgets to act like a believable human being, and thus we  as an audience  don't buy his sudden transformation from a happy family man to a tortured serial-killing soul.
I can't say that this ruined the show for me  it's was still good TV, better than almost everything else in the genre (mainly due to, once again, Coltrane). But its constant politicizing made it impossible for it to be as good as the real Cracker classics like "To Be A Somebody"  an episode that was just as "issuey", but one that was handled with far more subtlety and psychological depth.
Two other small points: Panhandle not being around is a disappointment, but what's worse are her replacements. The entire police department  which for so long filled with such great characters - is now full of vanilla. Completely interchangeable cops who lack any and all personality (how you could drain Coupling's Richard Coyle of personality is beyond me, but it is indeed missing here).
Also, there are couple of moments where the show lost its believability for me. One such instance revolves around Fitz having to narrow down the entire population of Manchester from 1 million to a hundred based on some very strange criteria (French windows? How does the computer know if I have French windows?)  he not only succeeds in doing this, but he succeeds in less than an hour. I don't think so.
So, all in all, I was a little disappointed. It's recommended viewing, but remember to leave at least some of your expectations at the door. Still, if there's new series to come after this, it would all have been for the good: I'm convinced that McGovern can still write great stuff, and maybe now that he's got his politics out of his system he can go back to writing about people.