Director: Rupert Wyatt
Writers: Erica Beeney, Gary Ross, David Self, Rupert Wyatt
Stars: Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Sami Bouajila
Synopsis: An honorable and mysterious rogue makes himself an enemy of the Emperor Kisra after he helps a fugitive king and princess in the desert.
Studios used to supply multiplexes with several mid-budget medieval and sword and sandal spectacles every year. Much like the studio family drama and rom-com, these films have been pushed to streamers in favor of the next swing at an already vetted IP. Though, much like the family drama and the rom-com, epics of the dark ages are slowly trickling back into theaters from a few of the more intrepid mid-sized distributors. Even though they command fewer screens than they used to, they can at least get a portion of their budget back before VOD and streamer negotiations. Some have even had modest successes at the box office. Desert Warrior harkens back to a time when we had middle-of -the-road spectacles to keep us company between the awards bait of the fall and winter and the all-out blockbusters of the summer.
The film’s story is very simple. It’s got kings, concubines, a mad emperor, disparate tribes coming together, and a lone warrior who reluctantly joins the fight to stand against evil. It’s a very standard genre film. Most of the performances are competent and unflashy. The dramatic turns are well foreshadowed and the villains are appropriately savage. It’s not attempting to reinvent the wheel or do anything more than entertain.
What sets this film apart are its technical aspects and post production additions. These artisans keep the story from feeling stale and moving in the right direction when it could become bogged down with characters and story elements that are unnecessary. So much of the film feels more watchable because of these craftspeople.
Cinematographer Guillermo Garza is able to make endless miles of rock and sand utterly captivating. From his awe inspiring overhead shots to the hero making and villain creating closeups, Garza’s camera is dynamic without ever feeling uncontrolled. It’s old hat to praise a tracking shot, but Desert Warrior only has one and it’s much more complex than a standard straight line. The camera follows different characters as they ready themselves and their warriors for battle. It dips between trees, over water, and into trenches. It’s a superb shot in a film of very lush, yet unflashy, camera work.
The shots, when cut together by editors Kelley Dixon and Richard Mettler, take on an entirely new shape. These editors are adept at knowing when to jump cut a potentially boring journey as well as when to heighten tension that’s already playing on a blade’s edge. In one particular scene, the juxtaposition between Hind’s (Aiysha Hart) finding peace in the village that is protecting her by making juice from pomegranates and her father’s (Ghassan Massoud) execution is a quick cut masterstroke.
Then there’s Dan Levy’s epic score. He makes the music sound ancient and modern all at once. Even the most mundane scenes, when given his score, become pulse pounding. It’s an operatic ode to the desert that surprises and keeps us on the edge of our seats. The final battle is made all the better for his musical accompaniment.
Desert Warrior, in spite of some wizardry from the crew, is mostly a by-the-numbers epic. Though, it could be an interesting concept to take Anthony Mackie’s nameless bandit on more adventures. He has the DNA of Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name and Toshiro Mifune’s Sanjuro. In some ways Desert Warrior functions like a spaghetti western, but unlike those films it doesn’t strive to make a unique stamp on its genre, just make a fine film that’s enjoyable. Really that’s more than we could want and it’s nice to see something like it back on the big screen.
