Alexander Schikora
The movie story is actually an interesting topic, but it is a pain to watch. The camera is shaking all the time, even when the actor is using a binocular it is shaking very strongly. As if the shaking over- dramatic camera wouldn't be already enough, it is often too zoomed in on a scene or a character that you cannot really feel "in the movie" because this is so off-putting. And then the F16 was totally out of place. So if you keep in mind that this movie was made by the worst director in history plus the worst camera and scene that I ever experienced, you can go ahead and suffer through these 1h37m, I could not.
Bthomas68
He is such a crappy director and movie maker. Until now. Not Oscar worthy, but definitely very, very powerful. I'm a 45 year old male having to hold it in 10 minute mark on. Wife probably cried through most of it. I know she turned away a few times. The movie is very brutal, cold, and unforgiving. Watching children die ( horribly ) is never easy. It's not so much the actors, they did their job working with the script they had. What made the movie great was the subject matter. It's a shame nothing was done to stop the slaughter of all those people. Untold thousands dying because of race or religion. When will people learn.
Chris Gill
Hard to believe this was directed by the same man who brought us House Of The Dead and the execrable Alone In The Dark. However, it does seem that the previously very estimable Herr Boll is building himself a tidy portfolio of "issue" films to accompany his lacklustre video game adaptations and dreadful "comedies". Using a growing company of relatively accomplished players (Jurgen Prochnow, Edward Furlong, Kristanna Loken, Michael Pare, Matt Frewer)Prior to this film, I had only seen one of his issue films. Heart Of America, a take on American school violence, it was ambitious but perhaps overreaching. Clunky performances (Brendan Fletcher, excepted), odd shot choices and an ambling real-time screenplay.It also hugely oversimplified and misunderstood the motivations of the Columbine killers, if they were the inspiration (and considering lead actor Michael Belyea's remarkable physical resemblance to Eric Harris, it's a fair conclusion that it must have been).Respect for the attempt, nothing more. Certainly nothing that prepared me for Darfur.Don't be fooled by the advertising or its alternate title, this isn't Billy Zane and the Terminatrix save Africa. Darfur is a powerful, horrible, brutal, gut punch of a film that brings to life the very real and very recent horrors committed during the ongoing Afro-Arab conflict.There is little in the way of plot, a group of British and American journalists and a Scandinavian aid worker are escorted by a consignment of African Union soldiers, there only in a peacekeeping capacity.They are taken to a local village where through speaking to the locals they learn of the atrocities that have been suffered. The villagers speak in hushed tones of mass executions, rape with the threat of AIDS and abduction. Whispered atrocities that will soon become a vivid reality.A consignment of Janjaweed approach the village and although initially confronted by the westerners and the AU force, it is all too apparent that they are impotent in the face of the warmongers, outnumbered and with no mandate to engage.Forced to retreat and failing in their attempt to pry a small glimmer of hope from this awful situation, one of the group breaks on the journey away from the village and demands to be allowed to return to the scene of the slaughter. To what end, only he knows but he knows that he cannot live the rest of his life knowing that he turned his back and ran away (it is telling that the opening line of dialogue in the film is an American cameraman beseeching for someone to tell him how he can ever go home again – he is alive to tell the tale but at what cost to his psyche and soul?).There could be a debate about whether Boll's take on this is exploitative, essentially making a horror film about a real life situation – accusations that could levelled fairly reasonably at movies like Men Behind The Sun and Nanking Massacre (I've yet to view Boll's take on WW2 atrocities with Auschwitz). I fall on the side of nay in this metaphorical debate that I've just invented, the opening period of the film is at pains to paint the villagers as human beings and the atrocities depicted follow those documented by reporters who braved the region albeit using the device of a single village as a microcosm for the genocide.If there is a criticism, it is that the politics, racism and historical conflict that have lead to this are ignored almost completely. The Janjaweed are presented as nothing more than faceless killers lead by a charismatic Commander (an excellent though underused Sammy Sheik)who could have wandered in from any number of action movies.Whether the film should address these issues is open to debate. The film does not blink away from the atrocities – they are depicted frankly and brutally – women are raped and shot, mass executions are undertaken by machine gun, babies are crushed and impaled, those deemed not worthy of a bullet are hacked to death with machetes.At no point, though, does this feel like an attempt to titillate the viewer with violence, it presents itself to bludgeon and sicken the viewer with its sustained violence for over half of the films running time, there is no attempt to comfort the viewer. This is how it is. This is what the TV news means when it uses the euphemism "humanitarian crisis".How do you feel about it? What are you going to do about it?Despite a fairly unrealistic redemptive coda, the westerners attempts to intervene acts as a metaphor for the West's historically clumsy and misguided attempts to intervene in African politics: impotent and inept, only caring when its too late. The intervention itself ends savagely also: all are equal in the eyes of genocide. An aside: interestingly I'd also recently watched Adam Curtis' excellent documentary All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace which, amongst other things, explores the horrific results of America's intervention in the Congo and the Belgian governments' inextricable links to the genocide in Rwanda. Both of these were brought to mind during the westerner's ultimate confrontation with the Janjaweed.It may well be that the film is simply as impotent a howl of tragic, existential fury as its opening line. How can any of us go home again knowing what is going on and doing little or nothing to stop it?A final nod to David O'Hara, as excellent as always. Salute, Sir!One thing is for sure though, you can't dis Uwe Boll any more. He's done more than you have.Chapeau, Herr Boll, Chapeau.
leenarete
Since 1988 and the war continues and stinks of genocide. It has taken so many thousand lives before any kind of intervention can be made. Why do the Arabs want the Africans wiped out? Why does Janjaweed think raping and killing or butchering is the best way to get their land back? When did they loose it? Why kill? I have read but not scene the killings and this film made me wake and say something needs to be done and if I can help in any way I will. No journalist's voice is loud enough, no victim's cry is loud enough, no AU soldier's petition is loud enough. The guns and power remain with the Janjaweed, we need all the voices in the world to make them hear us and stop, just stop this inhumane war. Save Darfur and various international organizations are trying their best, I wish it was enough. I can only hope and pray.
