The Worst Film Ever

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

A beautiful existential film that is unlike most modern spoon-fed reality TV motion pictures, the film addresses core cultural differences in "what is of value"; which goes right to the heart of the World's problems. Yes, the dialog of the main love-interest of the Protagonist comes off in cliché's; but the other woman does not, so I don't think it's the writer. The rest of the dialog is amazing, and over-all the screenplay keeps a Falcon-eyed view of various belief systems at play, portrayed brilliantly by each character, but without judging. I, for one, find this more important than the 'reality' of the airplane or the accents. Story has recently been sacrificed to the god of reality and accuracy, and as the great film critic Pauline Kael said: 'Good Movies are rarely perfect movies." This film had mythological elements to it, and spiritual. I am so happy to have found it among the overwhelming amount of horror, violence, and stupid films lining the shelves of Hollywood.

Gave up within a half hour. Too boring for words. I mean literally. Instead I am just going to talk about sausages for the rest of this review.I like to eat sausages. Sausages are sausages and taste like sausages. They are made of sausage. This here is more interesting than this film. I could honestly just read the word sausage two thousand times off a huge scroll and be more entertained than I was by this film.The film would have been better if rather than drilling for oil they had simply drilled for sausages. Granted it might not be the most believable film but when something is this boring I hardly think it matters. In short: boring film, lacked sausages.

Had 'Black Gold' been made about 50 years earlier, it would most certainly have been hailed as an epic – but as it is, audiences these days are looking for their dramas to be made up of more than just sweeping vistas and grand battle scenes in exotic locations, which is in fact the only selling points of this Jean-Jacques Annaud movie. Of course, it must be said too that the French director hails from a different era, he of similar epics like 'Seven Years in Tibet' and 'Enemy at the Gates' obviously belonging to an older breed of filmmakers who still subscribe to big scenic adventures.No wonder then that Annaud was chosen for this first major international co-production by the Doha Film Institute, which had intended for the movie to kickstart big-budget filmmaking in Qatar. Certainly you can see why writer Hans Ruesch's 1957 novel 'South of the Heart' was chosen as the source material – his fictional tale of an Arab world in the early 20th century divided by the arrival of Texan prospectors looking for oil has parallels in the conflicting ideologies in today's Muslim world and could very well enlighten its prevailing ambivalence towards the West.Pity then that what relevance this story might have is lost in Annaud's staid storytelling – which fails to build up any sort of tension between the conflicting minds and egos of the progressive but unscrupulous Emir Nesib (Antonio Banderas) and the devout traditionalist Sultan Amar (Mark Strong) – as well as in the contrived dialogue he has co-scripted with Menno Meyjes. Yes, it's hard to take anything seriously when all you're thinking that what the characters say could only have come from the deluded mind of a Hollywood script doctor.And what makes it worse is that it doesn't seem as if that doctor had much of a story to tell in the first place – as befitting the dialogue, the characterisations and the narrative are too simplistic. From start to finish, both Amar and Nesib simply remain the anchors at two ends of a continuum, with nothing to suggest why the former is so traditional and the latter so modernist.Slightly more interesting is Amar's youngest son, a bookish Islamic scholar named Auda (Tahar Rahim) who becomes the focus of the movie in its second half – sent by Nesib to try to plead peace with Amar, he instead finds himself hand-twisted to lead one of Amar's contingents in an impending war against Nesib. To make matters worse, he has also recently been married to Nesib's daughter Leyla (Freida Pinto), so technically he belongs to both families. Nonetheless, his transformation is no more than standard Hollywood trite, as he realises that neither father's belief is entirely right, and the best solution lies somewhere in the middle – i.e. to be a moderate.To distract you from the clunky storytelling, Annaud enlists the help of his cinematographer Jean-Marie Dreujou to wow you with some stunning sun-drenched visuals of the shimmering desert – thanks in no small part as well to the on location shooting in Tunisia and Qatar. It's easy to get swept up in the Orientalism, paired with Fabio Perrone's colourfully lavish (though definitely not historically accurate) costumes and James Horner's soaring score. Not forgetting of course the occasional grand battle sequence featuring scores of camels, old-fashioned tanks and many many more extras - coming after almost one half hours into the movie, their arrival is nonetheless too little and too late.Given the limited scope of their roles, it's no wonder that the international cast don't quite know how to play their respective characters. Even character actor Mark Strong seems hemmed in by a script that gives his character little development – ditto for Antonio Banderas, whose hammy performance and Spanish accent is especially out of place in a movie that already pays little respect for authenticities. Rahim also proves a weak lead for the second half, never fully convincing as the naïve one learning the realities of his world the hard way.So it is that even with a scale that recalls the handsome Hollywood epics of the 1950s, 'Black Gold' does itself no favours with a less than compelling storyline that thoroughly fails to exploit the relevance of the narrative for a similarly divided Muslim world today. If you haven't yet caught 'Lawrence of Arabia', well then this just might be your introduction to that bygone era of filmmaking; but its effect is akin to being in the desert - once the shimmer wears off, you'll find yourself left high and dry and thirsting for more.

Black Gold – TRASH IT (C-) Black Gold seems like an ambiguous French/Arabian project but sadly the ambitions for only in spending around $55 Millions. The production value of the movie was great but the direction, execution and mediocre performances made it intolerable for me to sit through. Initial 30 minutes are watchable but after that movie becomes tedious. The performances by Antonia Banderas, Mark Strong, Frieda Pinto and Tahar Rahim are alright. Riz Ahmed's overacting cannot be ignored he needed to tone down a little. In the end, Black Gold is way too loud and intolerable to seat through 2hours. The story had potential but bad direction tanked the whole concept of wars on Black Gold.