Attack on Darfur (2009)

Depicting the meeting of a Western journalist crew with some Darfuri villagers and the latter party's subsequent massacre by a Janjaweed death squad, this film does not flinch from depicting the full horror of what "ethnic cleansing" entails. From the film's pivotal halfway mark, the audience finds itself confronted with an orgy of rape, infanticide, mutilation, and racial extermination which make flicks like Men Behind the Sun look like My Little Pony. To heighten the impact of the spotlighted slaughter, he has the journalists (played by a grab bag of Hollywood prominents) interview individual Darfuri (played by actual survivors of the conflict), building them up as characters in their own right before having them hacked, fuc ked, and tortured to death. Happy times! I challenge the viewer not to come away from this movie hating our species just a little bit (if they didn't already). We see a beleaguered but benign group of villagers butchered by a group of predators on a lebensraum trip; we see heroism presented as an purely emotionalistic and futile enterprise which yields minuscule reward; and we see those with the ability and proximity to face down savagery retreating on the rationale of following orders. At points, I even felt some contempt for the villagers as they prayed impotently to their figment of a god (who would likely use their blood and tears as masturbatory lubricant if he existed). Boll pours the misanthropy fuel, lights a match and sets the screen alight with it.Surprisingly, most of the big names (Billy Zane, Ed Furlong, Kristanna Loken) do very little with their screen time; it falls to Scotsman David O'Hara to provide some semblance of range and dynamism, and he plays his heroic martyr role with a passion that has you rooting for him despite the overwhelming odds against his success and survival. The other major standout is Sammy Sheik's Janjaweed commander, emanating a ostensible air of nobility which makes his role in events all the more chilling. The villagers, played by actual survivors of the predations depicted, clearly need no coaching to capture the terror of a preyed-upon people.Piercing and provocative filmmaking, Darfur left me with a perverse appreciation for the much-maligned Boll; on the strength of this and Rampage, I'm curious to see how he'll handle the Holocaust in his yet-to-be-released Auschwitz. By distancing himself from his earlier video-game-based auteurship with each original project, he may just earn the respect and kudos he's craved for so long.

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.

This is one of those rare films where you are one with the film and it emotionally wipes you out. If you're not a fan of his, my advice to you is forget that Uwe Boll made the film but remember that he made it when you're finished watching it: it seems like he actually can make good films.Filmed in South Africa, DARFUR (aka ATTACK ON DARFUR) deals with a group of journalists ~ among them David O'Hara, Billy Zane and Kristanna Loken ~ who travel to a Darfuri village in the Sudan. The people there live in fear of the marauding Janjaweed militia who attack the villages, killing, raping and pillaging and the journalists are there to expose the horrors of the Janjaweed. While the journalists are there, the Janjaweed arrive and the journalists are forced to flee, leaving the villagers at the mercy of the looters. While on the run, the journalists are faced with either getting back home or going back and making a stand............I saw this film at its' premiere in Cape Town on March 18th 2010 and was shocked, horrified and deeply disturbed by it ~ the violence is unrelenting, the you-are-there camera-work puts you in the centre of the action, Jessica de Rooij's music prepares you for something bad to happen (when it does, you are totally unprepared) and the acting is topnotch.Several people walked out of the screening as they couldn't take the violence and the horrific images: I burst into tears at the end where, in the midst of so much violence, death and destruction, a tiny, heart-rending sound of life is heard and I couldn't sleep that night, nor could I eat. The producer Chris Roland addressed us that night, apologizing to us if we came there to be entertained as "Uwe and myself didn't set out to entertain anyone".Brilliant is too weak a term for how great this film is.

a reviewer here called it "badly made exploitative violence pornography". and thats exactly what it is.To be more specific: Mr Boll took "idi I smotri" /check it on IMDb/ and thought: lets copy the ultra violence village burning scene 1:1 and stretch into 1 full hour. then we sell it as an "eye opener" and ride the same wave Schindlers List did in the early 90ies. There will also be a whole generation of people who have never seen "Idi I smotri" (or similar movies) and thus will think "Darfur" is unique.furthermore: how could ANYONE possibly ever doubt or criticize the "moral message" Darfur pretends to convey? those people must be either blatant racists or plain inhuman retards. no? perfect! oh .... "SPOILER WARNING"... the first half of the movie is a cheese feast that would almost pass as a parody. one thousand color filtered close ups of smiling children and happy, peaceful villagers. Even the plumpness of "i wear glasses, thus, I am civilized" is not withheld. Some reviewer pointed out,that Boll doesn't care a fart about darfur and their people, and I found this blatantly obvious as well.The other half of this movie is a chaotic gore feast. Boll, always a pioneer in misstepping, has a hundred children and babies slaughtered. And then some more. and why not? its the simple formula of all pornography: "its disgusting and despicable, but i just cant take my eyes of this woman's lovely breasts. lets have some more". Darfur is indeed a truly cheap attempt to harvest money from the naive, and boll does -again- and admirable job of having no shame to violate anything that is exploitable.I would assume only the very young or blessedly unknowing of any mass market popcorn media truly fall for bolls petty ploy. Everybody else should feel insulted by this fraud of a film.Only the truly nasty laugh and laugh about this movie. like Mr. Boll, when he reads the user reviews by people who felt "truly moved".