"Actor: Winston Ntshona"

• The Dogs Of War | DVD | (11/02/2002) from £11.93   |  Saving you £2.32 (21.74%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Based on the novel by Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War is an uneasy mix of espionage and combat that never really succeeds in either role. Based around the character of Paul Shannon, the film follows events in the fictional African state of Zagaro. Hired on a reconnaissance mission by a nameless multi-national corporation, Shannon is captured and tortured before his release, only to return to the country to lead a small band of mercenaries (the dogs of the title) in a bloody coup. The first section of the movie works best, building a real sense of tension and unease, not least through a typically understated performance by Christopher Walken as the paranoid loner who keeps a pistol in his fridge (watch too for a brief appearance from a young Jim Broadbent). There are obvious references to the by-then obsolete school of Vietnam filmmaking in the second section, with the Asian enemy replaced by an African one. The gung-ho mentality of the soldiers is, however, so two-dimensional that the viewer develops little empathy for their plight. The action is slow and drawn out, with the seemingly endless pregnant pauses operating as a means for enabling the film to achieve a reasonable running time. On the DVD: little is on offer here aside from the usual scene selection, audio and subtitle options and original cinema trailer. --Phil Udell

• The Air Up There | DVD | (15/03/2004) from £7.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (87.61%)   |  RRP £14.99

  A basketball coach searches Africa for raw talent and discovers a Winabi warrior called Saleh...

• The Wild Geese | DVD | (31/05/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Their home is their battlefield. Their calling is war. Their only loyalty is to each other. They are the Wild Geese. While they fight their mission in Africa sinister forces in the corridors of power are working to seal their fate.

• Ashanti | DVD | (25/03/2004) from £18.52   |  Saving you £-4.53 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Dr David Linderby and his wife Anansa are carrying out an innoculation programme in a small African village when Anansa disappears. 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 a slave trader called Suleiman to be sold to an Arab Prince. The authorities deny that the slave trade even exists so David must find unofficial organisations to help him; a shadowy world where the rescuers of slaves are just as ruthless as the traders themselves. Enlisting the help of Malik a nomad whose family where stolen by Suleiman David must leave civilisation behind and travel across the desert to find Anansa.