Dangerous Ground

Elizabeth Hurley's modeling contract, it's been reported, prohibits her from appearing in the buff. Well, the folks at Estee Lauder will be having a few heart palpitations after they catch her in Daryl James Roodt's Dangerous Ground, where she plays a crack-addicted stripper. Sure she looks great in leather boots and nonexistent miniskirts, but the rest of the movie is a bad dose of social-commentary wanna-be.

Ice Cube -- who some thought could act because of his performance in Boyz N the Hood -- plays an exiled South African who returns home to bury his father. A new dilemma arises when his mother begs him to go to Johannesburg to find his missing brother. Once in J-burg, he hooks up with his brother's girlfriend (Hurley) and discovers that they've pissed off the resident drug king (Ving Rhames). Cube does nothing but spout in-your-face attitude, even though he's a scholar who's spent the past 12 years at American universities; Hurley looks like a cover girl even when strung out. The editing is nauseating, and by the end two troubling questions have arisen: why was this film made, and what was Hugh Grant smoking? At the Copley Place, the Fresh Pond, and the Allston and in the suburbs.

-- Tom Meek