Red Sea Diving

This is the story of a group of heroic Mossad agents who pretend to lease a beach resort from the Sudanese government in order to use it as a hotel, but in fact use it as a seaside base for smuggling Ethiopian Jews from Africa. Both Ethiopia and Sudan were (and still are) volatile zones and Sudan is a Muslim country. It's basically the plot of Argo, but for another group of people, and it is also based on real events.

Now, the film is mediocre. The dramatic scenes are copy pasted from other films, the heroes are all ridiculously good looking, the evil antagonist is just evil for no good reason and all those tired 70's cliches rear out their ugly heads: every hero is reckless, the boss knows it, the idea is risky, the boss of the boss knows it, and somehow they smilingly admit going against every instinct and making it happen anyway. There is an especially cringe worthy scene where the bad guys inspect some trucks and, finding no bullet holes, conclude that those were not the trucks that smashed through a roadblock. Because smashing through other cars leaves no trace, unlike bullets.

There was a funny scene in the film when one of the characters says "It had to be Germans. It's always Germans!". It wasn't funny for the reasons the writers wanted, but because the entire film reeked of WWII hero movies where all the Nazis are bad and really stupid.

Bottom line: really by the numbers film that probably has very little to do with the actual events.

Almost missed on this film,because some people reviewed it as political propaganda instead of really reviewing the film itself.. Haters got to hate..

The real review is this film is solid(acting,directed etc),enjoyable watching,and recaptures some important history.

The problem with this film I felt most of the plot was repeated in other films which kept it from been really great hence gave it only a 7. Nothing original here,except the true story behind the movie that inspired its creation.

This film tells the story of a group of agents who go into Sudan to save a group of Jewish refugees.

The good number of stars attracted me to this film, and it turns out to be as good as one can expect. It is a tight drama that makes you want to find out what happens next. Furthermore, it is about an issue that people should care about. I think it is worth a good watch.

There was a time when people (well... mainly hippies) used to take adventurous trips to Afghanistan. Nowadays, it seems ludicrous to think about that country - and Sudan - as attractive holiday destinations.

However, this movie reminds us that not as far in time as Afghanistan - actually, in the early 80s - a Red Sea diving resort in Sudan was a covetable destinations for Germans and other tourists.

Even if it's hard to believe that an African country on the brink of massive upheaval was visited by tourists, people actually do lots of stupid things. In this case, silly tourists were nothing more than "probable collateral damage" IRL, a handful of agents operated the resort as a cover for a rescue scheme that went on for years unnoticed. The Ethiopian were carried by trucks to the resort and shipped over to Israel, until the final mission, when the last bunch was transported by plane, because Sudanese officials . In this sort of movie, you should expect most (all?) characters to be a bit stereotyped. They are very much so that I did not get the need to introduce them quite at length, since their background was irrelevant to the development of the plot.

For instance, the Alex Hassle Max Rose's character, seemed quite interesting as a forever hungry assassin, but there is no development nor much action for him (nor for the others).

However, this is quite good entertainment with a solid, humanitarian background and not too much violence, apart from a horrific scene in a refugee camp.

Movies dealing with an exodus in the direction of the Holy Land are plethoric. I think in particular about Exodus (1960) with Paul Newman and directed by Otto Preminger and then about Vai e vivrai (2005) as heartbreaking as moving. Red Sea Diving (2019) is clearly a popcorn version of a real mission organized by the Mossad in order to secretly evacuate Ethiopians who have fled their native country in complete food crisis, via an abandoned Sudanese hotel, the Red Sea Diving Resort.

By being slightly in bad faith, the expedition looks a bit like Captain America with his team of Avengers saving Ethiopians undeservingly persecuted by Sudanese. But the director Gideon Raff skillfully avoided falling into these clichés and the film is globally successful, although we are very far from a cinematographic masterpiece. I particularly appreciated the performance of Chris Chalk, Greg Kinnear and Ben Kingsley who highlight the intergalactic star Chris Evans.

PS: I remain stunned by the sterile duel between the two extremist groups « 10 of 10 » versus « 1 of 10 » who represent, on August the 1st, more than a third of the votes.