Review No.99: Black Gold

Ever since Ridley Scott reinvented the old-school epic with Gladiator many people have tried to recreate his success with differing results from Oliver Stone's Alexander to Scott's own Kingdom of Heaven. The latest director to try his hand at creating an epic of sorts is Jean-Jacques Annaud, most famous for helming Seven Years in Tibet, who has presented a tale of feuding Sultans in 1920s Arabia entitled Black Gold. The film is based around a border dispute between Antonio Banderas' Emir Nesib and Mark Strong's Sultan Amar although they briefly settle their conflict as insurance Nesib takes both of Amar's sons. As this is the 1920s it's not long before the Texans turn up wanting to drill for oil in Nesib's area so he allows them to using the money to modernise the area building up hospitals, schools and a library where Amar's son Auda, now played by Tahir Rahim, works as he is a bookish chap. Nesib later wants to unite the two families so has Auda marry his daughter Leyla, played by Freida Pinto, both then journey to try and broker a deal with Amar. Amar's feelings about the oil are different to that of his rival and he feels that the land shouldn't be modernised in the way that Nesib has done this eventually leads to  a conflict with Auda leading several of the rival tribes to rebel against Nesib. Essentially this sees a man torn between two father figures, between being a scholar or a warrior and also fighting against the father of his true love.

From watching Black Gold it seemed to me that Annaud's main goal was to make everything look as dazzling as possible and to an extent he's done this. The decision to film primarily in Tunisia and Qatar makes the whole thing seem realistic while Jean-Marie Dreujou's cinematography perfectly captures the thrilling battle sequences in the latter part of the film as does the multi-coloured robes worn by the main characters. The epics of old also had memorable scores and while James Horner does a good job for me it doesn't live up to the greatness of Maurice Jarre's Lawrence of Arabia script. The main problem with Black Gold though is that it's just a bit dull with long speeches about border disputes and family traditions all I really wanted to see was more of the characters riding around on their horses or Freida Pinto's pretty smile. While I'm on the cast the only person who really made an impression on me was Mark Strong who is ever-reliable here as the long-in-the-tooth Amar he plays it just right as opposed to Banderas who goes a bit pantomime whenever he's on screen. Pinto and Riz Ahmed make good accounts of themselves whenever they're on screen however I was a bit disappointed by Rahim's contribution, especially when we remind ourselves how good he was in A Prophet, but maybe that's the fault of the script not creating a better role for him to sink his teeth into. Black Gold by no means is a poorly made film however it suffers from long speeches and tired clichés while having some cast members who don't try hard enough and some that go way over the top.

Verdict: Despite some decent cinematography and a hefty performance from Strong most of Black Gold is fairly dull and for that reason I'll only give it 5/10