The point here is that, in a clash of foreign colonial powers, the locals inevitably get the worst of it. This point is made early on and gets little further elaboration as the drama plays out. Giving the Oscar for best foreign film to a movie which was, let's be honest, a decent enough but obvious and not unusually clever satire on a serious topic (WWI), had to be some misguided exercise in political correctness before such nonsense had been given a name. Yes, it is fairly remarkable that a film with international appeal could be financed and shot in a place like the Ivory Coast. We get this. But an award for BEST foreign film, at a time when many national cinemas (Germany, France and Italy especially) were churning out a pretty impressive product, seems like tokenism. There. I said it. Go ahead and be offended.
The film itself is watchable enough but ordinary. The pacing is slow, the characters are not particularly sharply drawn, and the plotting - mostly a series of military misadventures and misunderstandings - is nothing really clever. It works well enough, but had me neither slapping my knees in merriment, nor nodding in acknowledgement of its cinematic skill. If Hollywood had cranked out something along the same lines we would have expected a higher level of creativity. It has unexpected moments of simple entertainment thanks to some old-fashioned knockabout comedy, but even this is executed with no display of unusual skill on the part of the film's makers. Everything manages to hold together well enough and move the story along - the cinematography of the African locations looks good - but there is just nothing here that is special enough to elevate the project above the realm of the merely good and giving it such a prestigious award as if it does seems dishonest. Watch it, but don't let the Oscar voters snow you. It's an okay movie, and an honest attempt at creating international cinema in an unexpected place. It's just not THAT GREAT.
The film itself is watchable enough but ordinary. The pacing is slow, the characters are not particularly sharply drawn, and the plotting - mostly a series of military misadventures and misunderstandings - is nothing really clever. It works well enough, but had me neither slapping my knees in merriment, nor nodding in acknowledgement of its cinematic skill. If Hollywood had cranked out something along the same lines we would have expected a higher level of creativity. It has unexpected moments of simple entertainment thanks to some old-fashioned knockabout comedy, but even this is executed with no display of unusual skill on the part of the film's makers. Everything manages to hold together well enough and move the story along - the cinematography of the African locations looks good - but there is just nothing here that is special enough to elevate the project above the realm of the merely good and giving it such a prestigious award as if it does seems dishonest. Watch it, but don't let the Oscar voters snow you. It's an okay movie, and an honest attempt at creating international cinema in an unexpected place. It's just not THAT GREAT.