Fire In Babylon (Blu-ray)

Firstly, I'm NOT a cricket fan. I've watched the odd bit here and there, but on reading several reviews on this film I thought I'd take a gamble as it is a keenly priced Blu Ray.

Really glad I did! What a great documentary. It tells the story of the West Indies cricket team, and their rise from popular "whipping boys" to the most dominant force any sport has ever seen. If, like me you are unfamiliar with the story I'll say no more.

I watched this with my wife, who shall we say was less than enthusiastic about watching a film about cricket! Not sure, who enjoyed it more! Me, or her!!

I've read the other review, and couldn't disagree more!! Take a punt and I don't think you'll be disappointed either!!

I bought this on blu-ray after reading reviews saying it was awesome, best docu ever and so on. Unfortuantely it's good but not that good. Positive points are the interviews with players such as Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Joel Garner etc. who as you would expect have intersting and worthwhile contributions to make to this potted history of WI cricket after the 60s. Also good are the archive footage and photographs which really took me back to my childhood in the 70s and watching these great players roll over every team in their path. Also positively the includion of interviews with powerful WI cultural figures is interesting and helps broaden the scope fo the film. Interviews with groundstaff also provide fascinating and all-to-often untold viewpoints.

The negative points are several however: the editing of the film leaves a lot to be desired, and a lot of the cutting merely creates a confusing and bizarrely constructed timeline where what feel like important points are abandoned before their time. In particular the very brief segment on the WI tour of South Africa ends up being baffling and unexplained. I would have liked to have seen much more archive footage as it's only really through seeing these players in action that you can understand their raw power, but there just wasn't enough of it. Also, although it's obviously intended as a homage to the team the only dissenting voive is included as an extra on the disc, but it would have been much more effective as a documentary to include the interview the feature itself and have some kind of reaction to that opinion from the players.

In short, if you like cricket and remember the WI team of the 70s and early 80s then there's definitely no harm in picking this up. If those caveats don't apply to you then you may well want to give this ultimately flawed and rather poorly constructed doucmentary a miss.