In 2018, Saudi Arabia opened its first movie theaters in more than three decades. Just a few short years later, production began on the $150 million historical action film Desert Warrior in 2021. The first English-language film from the country’s flagship film producer, MBC Studios, features recognizable Hollywood faces Anthony Mackie and Ben Kingsley in two of the biggest roles, while also being helmed by Planet of the Apes veteran Rupert Wyatt. Coming to theaters six years after a long, strenuous, and controversial production, the marketing touts Desert Warrior as the film to finally put Saudi Arabia on the map of global cinephilia. It certainly is the biggest.
In a pre-Islamic 7th century Arabia, Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart) chooses to rebel instead of reducing herself to the captivity of the Sasanian Emperor Kisra (Kingsley) as his concubine. She escapes to the desert with her father, the recently deposed King Numan (Ghassan Massoud), and, with a team of bandits led by Jalabzeen (Sharlto Copley) on their tail, the former king and princess desperately solicit the help of the renegade though reserved bandit Hanzala (Mackie). The film’s undisputed best scene is its history-making climactic battle, a clash known to history as the Battle of Dhu Qar. With the Sasanians being a Persian empire and the historical battle taking place in what is today Southern Iraq, this is a somewhat interestingly timed release given the state of Arab-Iranian geopolitics. The Arab tribes unifying in resistance under Hind to resist a Persian tyrant is simultaneously inspiring and politically thorny. Iranian cultural critics have, unsurprisingly, criticized the movie as “historical revisionism.”
Hart, a relative newcomer British–Saudi actor, elevates her role with charisma and dignified confidence. The way she holds her head high makes Hind’s triumph a predetermined end, and it’s a production irony that the local newcomer candidly outperforms the presumably much more expensive Hollywood men in Mackie and Kingsley; the former here repels charm like bug spray to mosquitoes, while the latter does little more than emote like a comic-book villain. By contrast, Hart serves as the film’s only sincere emotional anchor, and pulls Guillermo Garza’s camera closer the way only a real star can.
From a production standpoint, Desert Warrior‘s mammoth budget actually feels mammoth-like. British Hollywood producer Jeremy Bolt certainly had a hand in translating the dollar signs from an accounting constraint into epic filmmaking. He happens to be the longest-standing creative partner to director Paul W.S. Anderson, one of the most skilled filmmakers at making a film look bigger than its budget. And that’s not the only Anderson aesthetic he brings to Desert Warrior either. The fast-paced and chaotic editing is reminiscent of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter’s post-apocalyptic vision, while the anachronistic techno-instrumental score recalls the music of both Paul Haslinger (Monster Hunter) and Tomandandy (Resident Evil: Afterlife) in their respective Anderson-Bolt collaborations; said electronic music pulls the story out of Jahiliyyah Arabia and Persia in a modernizing and occasionally distracting tone. Visually, the film’s emphasis on using maps to ground proceedings in geographical spaces is also a key feature of Anderson’s visual storytelling — and apparently Bolt’s as well, given how dominantly they feature in Desert Warrior. The map inserts also help ease scene transitions that the editing struggles with otherwise.
But though Desert Warrior may be in an aesthetic relationship with Anderson, Wyatt doesn’t quite have the same visual prowess as the former, and this is particularly detrimental in many of the action scenes where the close-quarters combat becomes difficult to parse. The big climactic battle proves to be the exception. The action here is legible, quick, cunning, and engrossing. Hind commands her forces with the power and bearing of a general, and Wyatt’s direction chooses to stay with her just as much as it highlights the bloody, human-sized chess pieces she commands — the fight itself involves so much strategy that it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call it cerebral. More surprising for something like this is that only a few shoddy CGI war animals mar an otherwise stellar final scene, a flaw that can be forgiven given the relative restraint. After all, how many times have you seen hyenas zombified into furry and unstoppable carnivorous weapons of mass destruction? Perhaps there are still some new things under the sun.
DIRECTOR: Rupert Wyatt; CAST: Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley, Ghassan Massoud, Sharlto Copley ; DISTRIBUTOR: Vertical; IN THEATERS: April 24; RUNTIME: ddd
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