You know I’m a sucker for old style adventure movies.
And when I learned there’s an adventure flick I missed, and it’s based on a “lost” story by Louis L’Amour, I started searching.

The Diamond of Jeru, a classic tale of greed and divided loyalties set in Burma in 1955, was shot – under incredibly avverse conditions – in 2001.
It features Billy Zane, Paris Jefferson and Keith Carradine – a solid enough cast, for my tastes¹.

So, as I said, I started looking for the movie.

No luck at the local rental DVD place.
A friend said he had a copy.
He did not.
He had a link for an illegal download.
And it was the movie all right – but here we get to the weird part.
The flick had been… well, not subtitled, but over-voiced in Russian. Meaning there’s a guy, with a flat monotone voice, reading titles and captions, and basically summarizing the dialogue.
In Russian.
The actual soundtrack, dialogue and all, was turned down a little (but not much, or we’d lose music and environmental sounds), so basically you got a guy speaking in a foreign language over people speaking in what is, for me, a foreign language (albeit it’s my second language, so there).
An ugly mess, and utterly unwatchable².
So much for illegally downloaded movies. Truly, crime does not pay.

Thankfully, my brother found me a copy of the German DVD on Amazon, for the silly cost of 1 euro and 95 cents.
The disc is currently en route from somewhere in Germany and my house.
And as soon as I get it, I will review it.
Stay tuned.