The Seventh Coin

On the face of it, THE SEVENTH COIN is an Indiana Jones-style adventure that tells of the hunt for a fabled magic coin that once belonged to King Herod. There's no magical or supernatural stuff here, but the movie was shot in Israel so there's plenty of authentic value in the old walled city locations of Jerusalem.

The adventure stuff is kept to a minimum, despite the extensive presence of Peter O'Toole, playing a perfectly mannered British villain, you know, the type the Americans love so much. O'Toole will do anything to get his hands on this fabled coin, and the only thing standing in his way are a couple of kids in actual possession of the artifact: one of them's an American tourist, the other a Palestinian kid.

Most of the running time is made up of a star-crossed romance between these kids, a romance that takes the form of a sweet and sentimental friendship that gradually develops into something more. There's something controversial about this cross-cultural relationship and it's no surprise that the ending is a real cop-out, but it doesn't really provide much in the way of entertainment value. Watch out for John Rhys-Davies playing a gruff cop. Okay, when is he anything else but gruff?