The Red Sea Diving Resort

A tense throwback to the thrillers of the 1970s, Red Sea is about the aided exodus of Jews from Ethiopia by Israel in the late 70s. The script, direction and cast, main and supporting, are pretty much faultless and Chris Evans proves, without doubt, that there is life beyond the MCU; the boy can act. I do question political and religious bias, especially in light of Israel's record on human rights; however, I do not question heart and entertainment value. A great film. See it.

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 Va, vis et deviens (2005) as heartbreaking as moving. The Red Sea Diving Resort (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.

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.

In this case I reckon sort of both. I was not aware of the real life incident (or rather incidents) this falls back on and the real people involved. So it is always nice to have a light being shined on things one doesn't know. This might spark curiosity and people might want to learn more than the film offers (and one can only imagine how much more).

Having said all that, the term "first world problems" that is being used, makes even more sense when you see what other people have to endure for just a modicum of the freedom most of us (especially those with the privilege of having time to watch a lot of movies - looking at you kid - which in case I'm not clear is aimed at myself primarily) take for granted.

A very emotional movie, that does pack a punch and a few "action" scenes too. Don't expect this to be an effects fest of course. I would like to assume that most can see past the Marvel movies Chris Evans has done ... or his teen comedies for that matter. And just to be clear, those are entertaining to say the least. At least for a lot of people, so enjoy those ... and if you are up for something different, you will cherish this too - on a different level of course, but still. What is a human life worth? And not in Hollywood terms ...

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.