People are voting emotionally.

hyped garbage

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The story of Mussolini's Italian Colonisation of Libya and the 6th Governor who leads the offensive against the native resistance. The resistance is led by Omar al-Mukhtar Muhammad bin Farhat al-Manifi, a teacher of the Qur'an by profession, he was also skilled in the strategies and tactics of desert warfare, known locally by the Italians as 'Matari of the Mnifa' and here known as Lion of the Desert, the leader of native resistance in Eastern Libya under the Senussids. He is considered the national hero of Libya and a symbol of resistance in the Berber, Arab and Islamic worlds.Like 'Battle of the Algiers', detailing French colonistion, it was banned. 'Lions of the Desert' was banned for 7 years in Italy. We don't fully get to grips with the real people of this story, they are a bit thinly-drawn, and the narrative dynamic is a well worn David vs Goliath turn which continues to be made in equivalent films such as like Braveheart (1995). Nevertheless, the story is a good one and the war strategy and tactics played out are interesting. The battle sequences are right in number, but editing is not tight enough so it begins to drag in the middle, and for a biopic we needed more backstory for the marvellous Anthony Quinn to get his teeth into. Nonetheless, the locations are magnificently pictured, all filmed in Libya, and all the performances are good, even if the acting is a little hammy in places; we can almost look past the English character actors as part of the Lion's faithful crew.

Col. Muammar Qaddafi's suppression of a popular movement, resulting in a NATO bombing campaign (at least that was the ostensible reason) makes Moustapha Akkad's "Lion of the Desert" all the more relevant. The movie tells the story of religious teacher Omar Mukhtar (Anthony Quinn), who led a resistance movement against the Italian occupation in the early 20th century.Along with Quinn as Mukhtar, Oliver Reed plays Gen. Rodolfo Graziani, whom Benito Mussolini (Rod Steiger) sends to try and stop the resistance movement. Listening to what the Fascist forces keep telling the Libyans, I could see all sorts of analogies to more recent events. Namely, the Italians insist that they have as much if not more right to Libya as the native people do, just because it was a Roman colony 2,000 years ago (hmm, now what does that sound like?). Also, the movie leaves little to the imagination in showing what the Fascist army did to the Libyan people.The movie had sort of a bad reputation when it came out due to Qadaffi's having co-financed it. Regardless of where the money came from, "Lion of the Desert" is still a really good movie. There are a lot of great shots of the Libyan desert and mountains. But most important is how it relates to events today. Mukhtar's likeness now graces the Libyan 10-dinar bill, while the country's rebel forces have used his memory as a rallying call. Graziani, meanwhile, was later a major player in Italy's invasion of Ethiopia.Definitely a movie that I recommend. Also starring John Gielgud, Irene Papas and Raf Vallone. Director Akkad is best known as the producer of the "Halloween" series. He and his daughter got killed in a terrorist attack in Amman, Jordan, in 2005.

I am Italian and I was first given the opportunity to watch it during an Arabic class in Egypt. It was so weird hearing the Duce speaking in Arabic (...yes, they did dub it and the result is sometimes very clumsy). I could then understand how do Germans feel nowadays anytime they watch movies about Nazism. As it sheds light on a very dark chapter of our colonial period (just take, for example, the use of chemical gases), I would suggest it to Italian history teachers. The fact itself that the movie was banned tells you something about our contemporary mentality. From an artistic point of view I would say that the movie is not that good (take for example the battles, and some characters are too stereotypically displayed). The execution of the 'Lion' was a very touching moment, though.

From the first time I saw this movie I thought it great. It is refreshing to see an historical movie done accurately and yet prove entertaining. I thought it was the finest performance ever given by Anthony Quinn. A couple of years ago I saw an interview with Quinn in which he said that it was the role he was proudest of and he was right about it.It's not really amazing though that the such a great film was a commercial failure in the US certainly. One only has to recall the line about the right of settlers (Italian) "not one minute of right, to the pasture not one cow" to see the parallel drawn to events in a country some 1000 mile or so to the east. Italian justification of their occupation based on a two thousand year old pedigree got to the nub of today's headlines in the middle east.Lybia, the 'Berber Kingdom', has a long history. It has been part of the civilized world and great empires dating back to Carthage and including Greeks, Romans, Moors, etc. For those interested in music they have the chance to see how 'bagpipes' were and are played from where they came. Early on the movie, when the young men return to the village, their dance is accompanied by bagpipes.Omar's last words are brilliant and haunting: "As for me, I will live longer than my hangman". One of the militias in Lebanon, during its civil war, was called the 'Omar Mukhtar brigade'.