It seems that Dr. Campbell has for some time been operating on his own, without following typical company procedure, such as filing progress reports, and now that his contact has retired, the duty of figuring out just what he is up to down here has fallen to her. She isn’t exactly pleased. But then, neither is he.

As the story unfolds, we find first that Campbell is wary of his new charge, but she grows on him – both because he needs some assistance, and because he doesn’t seem to have had any companionship other than the natives for some time.

When pushed, Campbell reveals that the reason he finally sent a communication to the company was the he seems to have made a discovery, and he needs some help trying to refine it further, to see if perhaps they can synthesize the drug stateside. The problem he is having now is that he can’t reproduce his results.

For a normal drug, this might not be such a big deal, but it would seem that the good doctor has found the cure for cancer, and as such he’s just a little miffed that he has lost it.

Throughout the film, the focus is on trying to create another batch of the serum that contains the mythical “peak 37″, because as Dr. Crane puts it, that is “Mother Nature’s Kitchen”, and they can’t reproduce it themselves. So while they rapidly try and brew up more batches, the road that is being built through the jungle gets ever closer.

Backdrops of the jungle are amazing, especially on zip lines through the canopy of the jungle.

As the deadline nears, and a child in the tribe is dying and Campbell must decide whether to use the last of the serum, he has to make another choice. Does he sacrifice his pride, and visit the old medicine man, who lost face when Campbell brought Alka-Seltzer to the tribe, or does he stick to his guns?

In the end, Campbell goes to see him, and finds out that the flowers where he is looking are nothing special – there is no magic in them, according to the old medicine man. So he goes back to his testing, and it is Dr. Crane that uses the last of the serum to save the boy.

Just before the road comes through the village, they find the elusive peak 37 in a batch, and find out that it was not the flowers that caused it, but the bugs that lived in the flowers – but they are too late to stop the road, and the advancing machines cause fires that wipe out everything. The village is gone, and even the trees that housed the flowers are gone, so naturally the ants are gone too.

Despite being somewhat slower-paced than some typical action movies, there’s a lot to like here, and it’s well worth a watch. Sean Connery is just about always worth the price of admission, and if you can catch this gem on a weekend afternoon, you probably won’t find your time wasted.

Rated PG-13 for adult content and language.