Desert Warrior

So much money, so little to show for it. Obviously this movie looks great. Piles of money has been shoveled at it, but mere budget does doesn't make a good movie. And this is pretty dull. I am surprised at the lack of magnetism from the lead and the supporting cast isn't doing much to help him. Overall it's just pretty drab and the excitement feels very forced when it appears. I can't in good conscience recommend this, but I can't give it lower than five because of how good it actually looks even though it isn't that enjoyable.

Desert Warrior (2025) is set “1500 years ago” in Arabia, “where tribes fight over territory and water.” And where everybody speaks English. I can only imagine how much more fighting there would have been if each tribe had its own language or dialect.

According to the opening intertitles, “In a bid to take control[,] Emperor Kisra II of the Sassanid Empire demands all tribal Kings [sic] turn over their daughters as concubines. Those [sic] that refuse are hunted into harsh desert where only the strongest survive.” The strongest and the computer-generated.

I’d wonder how that counterintuitive recipe for disaster could possibly help Khosrow (oops, I meant “Kisra”) consolidate his power, but it sounds like he already has plenty of it, if he truly is able to issue and enforce such a decree.

It also sounds like a bunch of taurus cacas — a variation of the equally spurious droit du seigneur stuff from Braveheart. There must be several documented causes of conflict endemic to that time and place; the film itself mentions two that are very plausible: water and land. Why make something up wherein the conflict boils down to the heroes and villains fighting over a girl?

And the answer is, because it’s a convenient narrative shorthand that stands for three things. First, it lets us know that Kisra is a power-hungry tyrant — which Ben Kingsley’s can-I-have-my-money-now cameo isn’t enough to establish. Second, it reveals that Hanzala (Anthoy Mackey) may lust after gold but is also a Thief with a Heart of Gold when he protects Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart). And last but not least, #MeToo. Kisra II gets to be — retroactively and, I suspect, undeservedly — a patron devil of dirty old men because he had more than one wife at a time and God forbid we fail to project modern sensibilities onto ancient history regardless of what was customary back then.

What Desert Warrior lacks in the way of a sense of time, it makes up for with a sense of place, at least during the first hal...