dontspamme-11

'Attack on Darfur' marks one of Uwe Boll's first foray outside of the 'video-game to film' genre, a category of films familiar to us not for its tendency to be award winning, cutting edge, artistic, or intellectually sophisticated productions, but more because they tend to involve bad acting, gratuitous violence, nonsensical character motivations and plot-lines, low production value, and generally anything you can think of when you think of trashy flicks intended to turn the audience's brains off for a couple of hours.

In an attempt to gain recognition as s 'serious' film director and producer, Boll decides to tackle more 'serious' topics for his films--by making a video-game caricature of the civil war in Sudan: poor and oppressed African villagers in Darfur are slaughtered by maniacally evil Arab oppressors, while kindhearted white 'Westerners' helplessly look on, wondering why there is no international effort to 'get involved' and halt the atrocities (Like video game protagonists, the American journalists in the film decide to pick up guns and conduct their own little covert operation).

This is, of course, not what is actually happening in Sudan since the onset of the civil strife--it's a caricature, that reduces the complexity of the genocide to a simplistic one-sided affair that rather conveniently effaces much of its reality, in which numerous oil based economies from the US to China were in fact already implicated in generating the violent conflicts unfolding in Sudan, thus making it possible to fabricate a myth of 'international (military) intervention' as one of 'heroic rescue.' Apparently, Boll doesn't know that the word 'Arab' in Sudan is used in a different context than how it is widely (mis)used in Europe and North America, so he recruits a number of actors who look like they are of Middle-east descent to play the Sudanese Arab militia. The result is a poorly researched, poorly conceived, 'political-drama wannabe' that shares the same signatures as Hollywood action flicks: bad guys have bad aim, guns never need reloading, and every random person in the film has received small-arms training and can effectively use any firearm that is handed to them. The shaky cam technique, already over-exploited as a cheap method for conveying a sense of 'amateur realism' and 'immersion', makes an appearance here in a vain effort by Boll to induce motion sickness that he hopes will be confused by the audience as revulsion over the subject matter and the film's portrayal of violence. What it ends up producing, however, is depression.

What is depressing is not only the level of ignorance exhibited by the film and its director, but the number of reviewers who seem to think that this garbage delivers an accurate portrayal of the Sudanese civil war accompanied by a well-meaning political message. Meanwhile, Boll fires off angry letters to the press that his film is not being endorsed by supposedly progressive Hollywood celebrities, with all the righteous indignity of a crusading philanthropist that in fact turns out to be baseless.

I use to think that Boll was some sort of misunderstood talent that had a knack for subtle parodies and self-depreciation. I realize now that I was wrong.

After reading the other (positive) reviews, I am still unclear what redeeming qualities this film (purportedly) has. I am particularly boggled by the fact that some of the previous reviewers argued that the film was worth a watch or even deserved to be considered a "classic" (really?) without supplying any explanations or actual reasons, nor provide a comparison between this film and other films in the same genre (although, in what genre would this film really belong? 'Trashbin flicks'?). In fact, I wonder if we actually sat through the same film.

To provide a quick synopsis, the film has a premise (a rogue ninja hunted by other ninjas, trying to find a 'safe harbour'), but no plot. The story meanders through a series of cliché scenes with predictable outcomes, occasionally interrupted by people flying on wires performing 'special moves' that needed a narrator's help to explain (I guess if you like being treated as an idiot, this film might be for you...), ridiculous twists with nonsensical motivations, and animal cruelty that even I--someone not anything close to being a card-carrying member of PETA--found rather distasteful.

At some point, the only way to rationalize why we continue to subject ourselves to this filmatic torture was to find some small solace in nit-picking the technical errors and nonsensical development of the story. For example, I don't think the writer actually understood -how- crucifixion works as a form of capital punishment (puncturing the prisoner's body actually works to undermine its effects), and I particularly didn't think it was good parenting to have your 14 old year daughter take off her cloth and use her body to warm a stranger of sketchy background.

I've never read the manga, and after watching this film, I have no desire to. So if translating the manga into film was intended to extend and expand the franchise, it's failed to do that with me. I am not sure how anyone but the most fervent fans of the manga series might find this film appealing. If you have an attention span of longer than 3 minutes, I recommend you avoid this mess altogether.