Odd little film, though not as odd as it wishes it were. Unsubtle allegory: Nicolas Cage, in a surprising but successful casting choice (it's clearly an entirely Italian production; Cage is the only cast member who lacks an Italian or African accent), as Enrico, a lieutenant in Mussolini's army ("anti-fascist" is used as an insult), takes a SHORTCUT through the JUNGLE and LOSES THE PATH. While lost, he rapes Maryam, a native girl who then (get this) falls in love with him, and they spend a blissful honeymoon night in a cave. Awakened by hyenas, Enrico fires wildly, and a ricochet pierces Maryam's belly. His guilt is manifested, in the screenwriter's universe, by his growing suspicion that he has contracted Leprosy from Maryam. Hiding from his superiors, whom he believes want to shut him forever away in a leper colony and prevent him from returning home to his wife, he stumbles upon what he believes is Maryam's village, whose sole surviving occupant, Johannes, he believes to be Maryam's father. The disappointing thing is that his assumptions about the village and the old man turn out to be true, so the rest of the film deals with Enrnico atoning for his guilt in a very concrete--and therefore limited--way: the film has left the metaphoric and entered into the literal, so what began as Enrico's journey to self realization becomes, in the end, a simple payment of debt.
Review of Time to Kill
