By Dan Skip Allen

(1500 years ago in Arabia a vast land where tribes fight over territory and water in a bid to take control, Emperor Kisra II of the Sassanid Empire demands all tribal kings turn over their daughters as concubines; those that refuse are hunted into a harsh desert where only the strongest survive.)

One of the things I love about cinema is that sometimes you go in not knowing anything or just a little about a film. In the case of “Desert Warrior” I only knew the title and the star of it. That being Anthony Mackie. Most famous for being in the MCU as Captain America and previously Falcon. He parlayed that success into a nice career of films and television/streaming projects like “Twisted Metal”. His latest film, though, seems to be more of an epic period piece, which he hasn’t done much of in his career. It’s nice to see him do something out of the box. This is definitely something he hasn’t done in his career before. It’s a very pleasant surprise for me as well, who quite enjoyed it.

Mackie plays the typical bandit in Black in 1500 Arabia where the Emperor Kisra II (Ben Kingsley) has ruled that all women in his kingdom must become concubines of him. The man in Black on a horse gets pulled in by an ex-king Numan (Ghassan Massoud) and his beautiful daughter Hind (Ayisha Hart) to help them escape a group of men led by Commander Jalabzeen (Sharlto Copley) who works for the emperor. They are running for their lives because of the mandate the emperor has laid down. They seek shelter in the territory of Shaybani, but this doesn’t last long because these men will stop at nothing to get this woman for their master. This is a tale of freedom in the 17th century, where that was a luxury at the time.

With a film set in a desert landscape like this, there are a few things you have to look for, and one of them is the cinematography. This film has an absolutely gorgeous visual style to it. It’s hard to outdo Greg Fraser’s work in Dune and Dune Pt 2, but this comes close to that from my perspective. Guillermo Garza doesn’t over saturate the scenes, but he uses the desert landscape as a way to show the beauty of the places and time period it was filmed in. “Lawrence of Arabia” was another prime example of how to make a desert landscape look beautiful like this one and the others that I mentioned.

Another technical aspect of the movie is its score. There is a sweeping score by Dan Levy for the epic nature of this story. He uses themes of the Arabian landscape and the people that live there. With any movie such as this, the music has to match the scope of the film. I could hear many stringed and drummed instruments in this score, which gave it a powerful sound. Adding the scope that the director is going for. That’s what you want from a great score.

Besides Mackie, who is good but reserved in this film as the man in Black, there is a very good supporting cast. As mentioned, Kingsley, an Academy Award Winner For Best Actor in a leading role as Mahatma Gandhi in 1983, is the emperor. He has a nasty, viscous side to him. He plays a good villain. Also, Copley, who usually plays off the wall crazy characters like Howling Mad Murdock in “The A-Team” is reserved as well in this role as the leader of the army and commander of the Emperor’s guard. He just wants to complete his mission of retrieving the woman who has eluded him thus far so he can go home to his family. It’s nice to see him do something different. Hart is a standout for me as the daughter of the king who is running for her life. She does a good job of acting opposite Mackie for most of the movie. She’s an actress to look for in the future. She was good here alongside some bigger named actors. The supporting cast was surprisingly very good in this film. Rupert Wyatt, the director, got a lot out of all of them, big names and small.

With any epic film, you have to have an epic climax, and this movie has that in the form of a big battle between nomadic tribes and the Sassanid Empire at The Oasis of Ze Qar. There were a lot of men on horseback and arrows flying around and plenty of men in armor with swords slicing and dicing others to bits. With an epic like this, the battle has to match the movie as a whole like this one does. Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) got every once he could out of the stunt people, men and women alike. A lot can go wrong on an epic film like this one, and this battle looked great. The scope of it seemed like it was part of a multimillion dollar extravaganza, but it wasn’t that big of a budget for this movie. That’s when you know you’re doing a good job. When the scale outways the smaller budget. 

“Desert Warrior” is a cinematic Marvel. It has the scale and scope of much bigger movies than this but works on a smaller level. Sure, there is a big climactic battle at the end, but that comes after a lot of character development and great cinematography showing how beautiful this film is. Combine that with an amazing score and good ending, and you have a very professional production by Wyatt and company. The cast he assembled of bigger named actors and smaller actors are all terrific in this epic movie. With the backdrop of Arabia, this film means more in the world we live in today. The message of freedom for women is even more powerful now than it ever was. In these countries in the Middle East, women aren’t treated properly, and a film like this can open some eyes. It’s also enjoyable as pure cinema as well. Hopefully, audiences will go out and see this movie. It deserves that much. 

4 stars