DARFUR
DIRECTOR: Uwe Boll
CAST: Kristanna Loken, Noah Danby, David O’Hara, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Billy Zane, Edward Furlong
CLASSIFICATION: 16 VLS
RUNNING TIME: 98 Minutes
RATING: ***
Better known for his videogame-to-movie kind of films, director Uwe Boll proves with this one that he’s not all about blood, guts and gore.
Okay, it still has a fairly high quotient of nastiness and extreme violence, but that’s par for the course as the subject matter is the genocide in Sudan.
More readily castigated by critics for being one of the worst directors yet, he used to get his movies made because of German tax laws that reward investment in movies, regardless of whether they make a profit.
Nowadays, things have changed, and with this movie, certainly, he’s stepped away from the continuity gaffes, poor casting choices and bad scripting decisions of previous movies.
That’s not to say this is a masterpiece, it just looks much better in comparison, and approaching a serious topic scores him major brownie points as he steps quite widely out of his comfort zone.
Boll puts a group of journalists into the heart of trouble in Sudan when they are taken to a small rural village by peacekeepers (led by Hakeem Kae-Kazim), where they talk to people about what life is like under the heel of the Janjaweed.
Warned by the soldiers that the Janjaweed are on the way, the journalists debate whether staying could help the villages because their presence may deflect what could happen. The Janjaweed are having none of that, though, and this is where the story falls apart.
The film is aimed at that segment of the American market which is ignorant of what is happening in Sudan, so there is great emphasis on the atrociously violent nature of encounters, the rape, the pillaging, the utter senselessness of the violence.
The American journalists coming in and assuming they can save the day because they know how to solve the problem doesn’t make much sense when the root of the problem is not interrogated.
Corruption in the local militia force is hinted at, as is the frustration of the peacekeeping force about how their hands are tied, but again, it’s nebulous.
The Janjaweed are simply painted as evil, while the villagers are innocent victims, so it’s pretty black and white with no shades of meaning, explanation or subtlety.
Some of the actors handle the ad-libbed dialogue better than others, creating more fully rounded characters, with some of the villager roles being taken by Sudanese refugees living in South Africa.
Shot in South Africa, mostly in Cape Town, this is not a studio film. The West Coast credibly stands in for Sudan and the refugees were consulted to create veracity in language and mannerisms.
As technically proficient as that realism may be, though, this is a story that in reality is nowhere near as cut and dried as it is presented, which means it never rings true. Still, compared with Bloodrayne, it’s a step up.