Rating: 
Summary: King Solomon's Mines
Review: Congo is an adventure movie that has a number of plot threads. The first is the search for Bruce Campbell who lost communications with TraviCom while searching for a perfect diamond in the Congo. A forced satellite link shows the camp in disarray and the team lying dead but Bruce was not seen. The link is then broken by something that looks like a killer gorilla. A team needs to get there quickly by attaching themselves to another expedition.Secondly a young scientist has used virtual reality technology to teach a young gorilla how to talk. A computer and a VR glove interpret the gorilla's sign language and turns it into speech. The gorilla had also been taught to paint. Amy (the gorilla) is having nightmares and painting the jungle. An expedition is formed to return her to her home in the Congo. Thirdly, we have Tim Curry as a Hungarian philanthropist who funds the gorilla expedition as he feels the gorilla has seen the lost city of Zinj built by Solomon to protect his diamond mines. These three plots are tied together in a believable fashion with some interesting characters thrown in (especially the guide who alone makes the movie worth seeing). As is typical in the Lost Race sub genre, something will happen to make returning impossible. In this movie the plot device is the volcanic range that produced the diamonds. This is one of the few modern Lost Race stories that works despite what modern science knows about the world. The movie begins in the States setting up the plot threads then moves to traveling through an Africa in political upheaval and ends in the rainforest with Zinj and its mysterious inhabitants. Like most movies it has some flaws. The biggest being the Egyptian look of Solomon's city. Nothing Jewish looking about the place. The walls were even covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics. Still, it was an enjoyable movie with good characters and plots. This is a film I recommend.
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