6/10
Argo for Ethiopian Jews
20 April 2020
This is the story of a group of heroic Mossad agents who pretend to lease a beach resort from the Sudanese government in order to use it as a hotel, but in fact use it as a seaside base for smuggling Ethiopian Jews from Africa. Both Ethiopia and Sudan were (and still are) volatile zones and Sudan is a Muslim country. It's basically the plot of Argo, but for another group of people, and it is also based on real events.

Now, the film is mediocre. The dramatic scenes are copy pasted from other films, the heroes are all ridiculously good looking, the evil antagonist is just evil for no good reason and all those tired 70's cliches rear out their ugly heads: every hero is reckless, the boss knows it, the idea is risky, the boss of the boss knows it, and somehow they smilingly admit going against every instinct and making it happen anyway. There is an especially cringe worthy scene where the bad guys inspect some trucks and, finding no bullet holes, conclude that those were not the trucks that smashed through a roadblock. Because smashing through other cars leaves no trace, unlike bullets.

There was a funny scene in the film when one of the characters says "It had to be Germans. It's always Germans!". It wasn't funny for the reasons the writers wanted, but because the entire film reeked of WWII hero movies where all the Nazis are bad and really stupid.

Bottom line: really by the numbers film that probably has very little to do with the actual events.
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