Sat 3 Jan 2015
A Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: TUAREG: THE DESERT WARRIOR
Posted by Steve under Action Adventure movies , Reviews[12] Comments
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.
January 4th, 2015 at 12:38 am
Mark Harmon, what a guy. He wanted to be a big name star so bad..but it was his fate to rest (as many others do) in the Don Johnson mold. Nice looking guy but something indefinable, just lacking there somehow.
January 4th, 2015 at 12:46 am
It took him nearly 30 years before he really hit the big time with NCIS. And I don’t suppose anyone ever expected that show to be the hit that it was. Harmon’s filmography from the 70s through the 90s is actually quite vast. I remember seeing him in a Western with Tom Selleck.
January 4th, 2015 at 12:47 am
While the Tuareg’s certainly fit the bill as sticking to the ancient ways, they also had something of a reputation for banditry and slitting travelers throats — so much for hospitality. One of their other honorable traditions is keeping slaves. The ones you see all in white are slaves by the way.
Ironic too to make a movie about a tribe that oft times takes any image of themselves to be an attempt to steal their soul and can get quite violent about it.
That aside, its a movie, not a history or social lesson, and Harmon shows a side of his talents no one had really seen at that point. I would say this character is closer to Gibbs than anyone he played before or after until Gibbs, a man with a rigid code he abides to at all costs.
Another bit of irony it’s made by an Italian company considering the Italian army in that part of the world in the 1930’s.
It reminded me a bit of THE HORSEMAN in the attempt to show a culture so alien as to be difficult for westerners to relate entirely.
I found it more interesting than truly entertaining, more of a good idea than a well turned out project. It is interesting to compare it to THE WIND AND THE LION, a better and much more successful film in portraying an ancient culture clashing with the modern world.
Still, the fierce laws about hospitality, while not quite this clean cut, are real enough in the desert. Some Biblical scholars will even tell you Sodom’s sin was not sexual, but because they violated the rules about being gracious hosts.
Something to keep in mind next time you are pondering tossing your obnoxious brother in law out at a family gathering.
It’s not one I would suggest anyone buy (copies on VHS were so common you could find it for a $1 often and it used to be available at a $1 in DVD form at Dollar stores)but worth watching free on YouTube.
You do have to wonder what the story is though about clean cut all American Mark Harmon getting cast in this.
January 5th, 2015 at 1:24 am
Not too many American films ever get the Mid-East correct. Michael Sarrazin and Anthony Quinn starred in a lackluster film version of James Michener’s ‘Caravans’, Or, the surprisingly awful ‘The Horsemen’ adaptation by Dalton Trumbo–from Joseph Kessels’ fine novel about the modernization of Afghanistan. Directed by John Frankenheimer. [Hard to fathom how all that talent yielded such a dud]. Going farther back, Kirk Douglas in the 1966 ‘Cast a Giant Shadow’ or the strange int’l production ‘The Poppy is also a Flower’. Awk. I almost can’t even name a single USA film about anything in the mid-east which stands up. David Lean and ‘Lawrence’ stands supreme regardless of historical inaccuracy.
January 5th, 2015 at 2:04 am
Fun topic. Favorite films about the Near East: ‘March or Die’ with Gene Hackman, ‘Garden of Allah’ with Marlene Dietrich, ‘The Hill’ with Sean Connery, ‘Beau Geste’ with Gary Cooper, ‘Khartoum’ with Charlton Heston, ‘Ben Hur’ (any version), ‘Sons of the Desert’ with Laurel & Hardy, ‘Outpost in Morocco’ with George Raft, ‘Ice Cold in Alex’, ‘The Lost Patrol’ (McLaglin), Sahara’ (Bogart), ‘Five Graves to Cairo’…’Sole Survivor’ (TV)…hmm, what else? Desert flicks are great entertainment.
January 5th, 2015 at 12:16 pm
#5:
I believe Feliks is thinking of Laurel & Hardy’s Beau Hunks as a Middle-Eastern movie.
Sons Of The Desert was about a Shriner-type lodge, entirely set in the USA.
Small point, maybe …
January 5th, 2015 at 2:04 pm
You’re right. Thanks for the correction!
January 5th, 2015 at 2:54 pm
It’s amazing what one learns by reading the comments to each review.
January 5th, 2015 at 4:11 pm
I actually didn’t care for OUTPOST IN MOROCCO with George Raft at all. I thought he was not well cast in that. On the other hand, KHARTOUM, with Olivier and Heston, is an excellent film — A British film about the Middle East.
There haven’t been all that many American films that deal with Middle Eastern history in a serious manner. But I think a lot of people like David O’Russell’s THREE KINGS quite a bit. It didn’t impress me much at the time I saw it, though. May need to see it again
January 5th, 2015 at 6:17 pm
Jonathan,
THREE KINGS was one I was going to add to the list, but I have to agree for the most part the Brits and the French tend to get the Middle East where many American films go for quaint.
Still, guys, where do you think CASABLANCA was set, Detroit?
A few other Middle Easterns of variable quality, ROPE OF SAND, THE LOST COMMAND (with Delon and Quinn, not Hayden and Borgnine), CAIRO (remake of ASPHALT JUNGLE, not the musical with Robert Young), ALGIERS, VALLEY OF THE KINGS (a favorite of mine), L’ATLANTIDE, TEN TALL MEN, and of course ABBOTT AND COSTELLO LOST IN A HAREM and the ROAD TO MOROCCO.
And lest anyone mention it LEGEND OF THE LOST should stay lost.
Didn’t Harrison Ford do a couple of films set in the Middle East — something about an ARK and a CRUSADE?
January 5th, 2015 at 8:11 pm
Then, there’s THE DELTA FORCE. Whatever one thinks of Chuck Norris, Lee Marvin is in it. As is Robert Forster in a great role as a Lebanese terrorist
December 30th, 2016 at 8:07 pm
I read all the comments. I clicked out of the movie when I realized the Tuarig was going to kill his camel in order to survive. I really cannot ever stand to watch animals die. Meanwhile, I still want to know how it ends. My husband streamed it on Amazon and I came in late and didn’t see the credits, so didn’t know it was Harmon in the lead. I was astonished to learn that it was. Meanwhile, I have followed his career for 25 years, have always thought he was terrific, didn’t ever see him as a failed “wannabe”, was eager to see anything he was in. He has more charisma in his little finger than any of the current hot shots.
So what is this “stunning” ending? I am not going to restream it and watch the camel die, it ain’t happening. How does it end? Sheesh.