What a disaster. I can forgive a fictionalized account of real events. I can forgive a simplified, action-heavy story if it's important. I can forgive non-representative casting. But put it all together into a boring mess of wasted talent, forgettable plot, confusing filmmaking, and irresponsible storytelling, and The Red Sea Diving Resort marks a miserably low viewing experience during this quarantine season.
The story concerns a group of Mossad agents who purchase and operate the titular coastal resort in order to smuggle Ethiopian Jews out of the country and to safety in Israel. I feel embarrassed to admit I know nothing of the plight of this population of Jewish refugees in real life, however this film does less than nothing to educate me. In fact, I feel more bewildered after having watched it. There seems to be a vague Muslim threat -- the but this bleeds into what appears to be less-than-casual racism in which a bunch of white actors portray the Israelis and black actors play either the victims or the villains. Accusations of racism are nothing new for writer/director Gideon Raff (who is a fascinating person but has yet to make anything worth watching, at least anything accessible to Americans).
The opening sequence makes my case for me. With no explanation or context whatsoever, a bunch of Ethiopian villagers are fleeing gun-toting Ethiopian (or perhaps Sudanese?) soldiers. As they pile into waiting trucks, a mother cries out for her missing child, who is obliviously playing in a nearby field. Help her, Chris Evans, you're her only hope. Enter the hero himself, who grabs the boy and makes it to safety in the nick of time, as gunfire rips the air apart in his wake. Leave it to the white savior to save the little brown baby and get this movie off to a jump-start.
After some bizarre scenes of Chris Evans -- a Mossad agent who has returned to Israel to debrief with Ben Kingsley -- sleeplessly angst-ing about his friend and the other Ethiopian Jews who need his help, he is directed to assemble a team of avengers. Oh, no, I'm sorry, that's wrong. He gathers a group of other (possibly former?) Mossad colleagues and they go to the titular resort on the coast of Sudan, purchased for them by Israel. They plan to use the resort as a front for their operation: housing refugees and shipping them to an Israeli ship off in the Red Sea. It's all very Underground Railroad of them until tourists show up actually wanting to use the resort for... resort-y things.
Scenes like this that could be funny or tense are squandered by a truly confoundingly stupid screenplay. Characters describe each other and their situations, motivations, and explanations in point-blank terms, proving that the writer didn't think real people could emote or an editor could make sense of the action. What could be compelling characters become dullards, played blankly by actors who are otherwise beautiful to look at (Michiel Huisman and Alessandro Nivola can get it, to say nothing of Haley Bennett). Chris Evans proves again that he's a waste of an actor (excepting his turn in Knives Out), if a brilliant action movie star.
And then there's Chris Chalk, who is actually quite chilling as the movie's villain, because of course there has to be one in an action movie. A historical drama this most certainly is not. He plays a Sudanese soldier who torments the Ethiopian Jews waiting to flee his grasp with a menacing presence, but even he is undermined by Raff's bizarre storytelling. The film's midpoint is a lighthearted sequence of the Mossad agents revitalizing the dusty resort to better disguise their covert operations. It's inspired by a mostly naked Chris Evans waking up on a sunny morning and seeing the resort tenants doing tai chi on the sand before chatting nonchalantly with a speedo-sporting Michiel Huisman. It's funny and cute and sweet, feeling like it belongs in a very different movie altogether, spliced together in a retro montage underscored by Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" (did I mention this movie takes place in the '80s? Because it constantly reminds you of that). It cuts abruptly -- and unearnedly -- to a scene of Chris Chalk murdering Jews while he interrogates them, a tasteless and offensive turn that pulls you so far out of the movie it is impossible to get back in.
The story might be wonderful, but I need to look up the historical record. This movie taught me nothing about what really happened. It turns real-life heroes into caricatures, and then attempts to make them into action movie heroes. It's not memorable, educational, inspiring, or even entertaining. Well, except the beautiful white heroes in their beach-wear.
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