Ashanti (1979 film)

Ashanti also called Ashanti, Land of No Mercy is a 1979 action adventure film, produced by GeorgesAlain Vuille, and directed by Richard Fleischer. Despite its impressive cast and setting on location in the Sahara, and in Kenya, Israel, and Sicily, it was widely panned by critics upon release. Michael Caine was reportedly very disappointed with the project and claims it was the third worst film along with his previous films The Magus and The Swarm despite appearing in other failures in the 1980s, after director Fleischer and costar Beverly Johnson, were both removed from filming twothirds of the way through the shoot. Fleischer departed after being hospitalised with sunstroke. However, an interview with Ms. Johnson included on the 2013 Severin Films Bluray edition of Ashanti makes no reference to these removals, suggesting that they may belong to myth.

Ashanti is an action adventure film, set against the background of modern day slave trading, with a man who determinedly takes on a perilous journey in order to find his beautiful wife, who has been kidnapped by brutal slave traders. David and Anansa Linderby Caine and Johnson respectively are doctors with the World Health Organization. On a medical mission carrying out an inoculation programme, they visit a West African village. While David takes photographs of tribal dancers, Anansa goes swimming alone. She is attacked and abducted by slave traders led by Suleiman Peter Ustinov, who mistake her for an Ashanti tribeswoman. The police can do nothing to find her and David has almost given up hope when he hears rumours that Anansa has been kidnapped by Sulieman to be sold to Arab Prince Hassan Omar Sharif. The African authorities deny that the slave trade even exists. So David must find help in a shadowy world where the rescuers of slaves are just as ruthless as the traders themselves. As David tracks her across Africa and the Sahara desert, he is helped by a member of the AntiSlavery League Rex Harrison, a mercenary helicopter pilot William Holden, and Malik Kabir Bedi a tribesman who is seeking revenge on Suleiman.During filming Omar Sharif was hired to play a role and George MacDonald Fraser, who had recently adapted Tai Pan for the producers, was commissioned to work on the script to help boost Sharifs part. ........

Source: Wikipedia