Sunday, 3 February 2013

Lacking the gold


Black Gold (2011)

Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud this film based on the novel South of the Heart: A Novel Of Modern Arabia stars Tahar Rahim, Mark Strong, Antonio Bandaras and Freida Pinto. A young Arab prince is caught in the struggle between modernisation and tradition as oil wealth comes to the Arabian peninsula.

The subtext of this film is clearly to look at the choices facing nations in the Arab world that struggle between sudden vast wealth from oil but strong, conservative, religious traditions hold back progress. Where the film has problems is that the story does not really reflect either actual history or the situation on the ground, being more of an over simplification that does not really offer any concrete solutions. As a piece of pure entertainment it is not bad but a lot of the action sequences seem to borrow heavily from the exploits of Lawrence of Arabia and the romance element is largely unbelievable.

2/5

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