BLOODY `DANGEROUS GROUND' TOO EXPLOITATIVE TO BE TRUSTED.

Byline: Stephen Holden The New York Times

Darrell James Roodt, the talented South African filmmaker responsible for the movie version of the musical ``Sarafina!'' and for a solemnly effective screen adaptation of ``Cry, the Beloved Country,'' stumbles badly with his newest film, ``Dangerous Ground,'' which opened Wednesday. An action-adventure yarn set in contemporary Johannesburg, the movie is continually stopping in its tracks to deliver simplistic, preachy political broadsides.

The director's attempt to give a morally high-minded spin to a movie that revels in violence as shamelessly as any Hollywood splatterfest seems at the very least disingenuous.

And the elegant cinematography, which alternates between black-and-white and color, adds a meretricious art-film gloss to a movie whose purported hero ends up storming a drug kingpin's high-rise penthouse and casually mowing down more than half a dozen people, including a naked woman in a hot tub.

Preparing for this blood bath, which is carried out with automatic weapons left over from the anti-apartheid struggle, he proves he is man enough for the task by ritually slaughtering a goat.

The hero and sermonizer in question, Vusi, is portrayed by the rap star Ice Cube, who delivers his character's voice-over screeds in a dull, leaden monotone. It is a terrible performance by an actor who often sounds as if he is reading his lines for the first time off cue cards. The oldest of three brothers, Vusi is a South African exile summoned home from the United States to bury his father.

To certify his heroic credentials, the film's opening sequence flashes back more than a decade to show him as a fearless 13-year-old freedom fighter brutalized and nearly killed by white policemen.

The South Africa that Vusi re-enters is a far cry from the post-apartheid utopia he had envisioned. His aimless, embittered middle brother, Ernest (Sechaba Morojele), who served in the army of the African National Congress, misses the good old days of armed struggle and scorns Vusi as a deserter and a softie. Vusi learns that his youngest brother, Steven (Eric ``Waku'' Miyeni), has disappeared into the wilds of Johannesburg, and at the behest of his grief-stricken mother agrees to find him and bring him home.

No sooner has Vusi arrived in the city than he is carjacked in broad daylight by a black gang whose leader cackles cynically when Vusi tries to appeal to racial brotherhood. Before long, he hooks up with Steven's white girlfriend, Karen (Elizabeth Hurley), a crack-addicted stripper who gives him a tour of the city's seamier side and delivers the bad news that Steven, a free-lance club disc jockey, is an addict in debt to a sinister drug lord named Muki (Ving Rhames). From here the movie degenerates into a standard blood-soaked fantasy of triumphant vigilante justice.

``Dangerous Ground'' is hobbled by wildly uneven acting (Hurley's gaunt, viperish Karen is a striking exception) and by a ponderous screenplay. South African blacks, declares Vusi, have been so conditioned to oppression that, having won their freedom, they turn to drugs and begin to oppress one another. It's the same thing, he insists, that happened in the United States in the 1970s in the wake of the civil rights movement.

However true this arguable thesis may be, ``Dangerous Ground'' is too exploitative and finally too unconvincing to be trusted on any level.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Dangerous Ground'' (R; violence, strong language, brief nudity).

The stars: Ice Cube, Elizabeth Hurley, Sechaba Morojele, Eric ``Waku'' Miyeni and Ving Rhames.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Darrell James Roodt. Written by Greg Latter and Roodt. Produced by Gillian Gorfil and Roodt. Released by New Line Cinema.

Running time: One hour, 32 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Rap star Ice Cube stars in ``Dangerous Ground.''