Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS:          


TUAREG: THE DESERT WARRIOR. Aspa Producciones Cinematográficas, Italy, 1984. Original title: Tuareg – Il guerriero del deserto. Mark Harmon, Luis Prendes, Ritza Brown, Paolo Malco, Aldo Sambrell, Ennio Girolami, Antonio Sabato. Based on the novel Tuareg by Alberto Vázquez Figueroa. Director: Enzo G. Castellari.

   Tuareg: The Desert Warrior is a movie about lines, literal and metaphorical, in the sand. Directed by Enzo G. Castellari (Keoma), the action-adventure film stars Mark Harmon (NCIS) as Gacel Sayah. He’s a North African nomadic tribesman steadfastly clinging to a pre-modern code of honor in the modern age. The viewer is expected to empathize with Sayah, all the while cognizant of the disastrous results that inevitably follow from his stubbornness and refusal to bow to the conventions of the post-colonial era.

   The movie benefits from good pacing and a quite good performance by Harmon, who seems to be taking the role seriously. Tuareg: The Desert Warrior doesn’t play it light; in many ways, it’s a quite bleak, often times graphically violent film. And if you can get over the fact that the future Jethro Gibbs is portraying an Arab tribesman, it’s a pretty darn good action flic with some seriously great “Rambo moments,” if you know what I mean.

   The action begins when two bedraggled men stumble into Sayah’s desert encampment. Sayah doesn’t much care who they are or where they came from. Believing deeply that hospitality is a cardinal virtue in the scorching hot desert, he considers these men to be his guests and hence, under his protection. So it’s not surprising that he refuses to turn these men over to the Arab soldiers when they show up in his camp.

   Sayah is, in his heart and mind, beholden to the law of the desert, where hospitality demands certain actions be taken by a host to protect his guests. When the soldiers kill one of the men and haul away another as a prisoner, Sayah is determined to uphold the law of hospitality, no matter the tragic consequences to him and to his family.

   As it turns out, his former guest, the man who he seeks to free from imprisonment in a desert fortress, is no ordinary man. He is the deposed president of the newly independent North African nation in which Sayah lives. Of course, desert nomad that he is, Sayah doesn’t really believe in those types of lines in the sand.

   An Italian-Spanish (and Israeli?) co-production, Tuareg: The Desert Warrior is replete with political subtexts. The issues of national unification, colonialism and independence, and political corruption are very much present. Sayah tells one of the Arab soldiers sent to capture him: “I do not understand a government that breaks the law, and then wants to punish me for it. It is stupid!” Contemporary Italian audiences may have appreciated that line quite a bit, but I have a feeling that a lot of people might appreciate it even more today.

   There’s something quite anarchic, even subversive, about Harmon’s character. Sayah is a man truly apart, often completely ignorant about the ways of the world. And as the stunning – shocking, really – ending demonstrates, sometimes being true to one’s code of honor has a way of backfiring.

   I didn’t see the ending coming. Which is perhaps one reason why I’d recommend you take a look at this movie. It’s not the greatest 1980s action film. Not by a long shot, but for what it is, it is pretty good celluloid escapism. But you’re going to have to get used to seeing Mark Harmon dressed as a desert nomad.