“If you didn’t know how beautiful your country was, you soon will,” remarked Finn Halliday, head of international programmes at the Red Sea International Film Festival, as she took to the stage in Jeddah to introduce Rupert Wyatt’s Desert Warrior. It sounded like typical festival bluster, but, for once, it was no exaggeration. Some films demand the biggest screen available – this is one of them. A spectacular and often thrilling historical film, it presents the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as it has never been seen on screen.
In the five years of the festival, there has arguably not been a film more aligned with the Red Sea’s ambitions – telling Saudi stories with Hollywood scale and expertise. The biggest English-language production ever filmed in the kingdom, Desert Warrior features an international cast including Oscar-winner Sir Ben Kingsley and Marvel star Anthony Mackie, and is backed by MBC, the Saudi-owned media giant. It has also been a long time coming – the shoot took place in late 2021 across Neom in the Tabuk region.
Whether the wait has been worth it depends on what you want from a period epic. Inspired by events from 1,500 years ago, the film embraces a notably old-fashioned style of storytelling – thousands of extras, fleets of horses and camels, and desert vistas that feel mythic. You sense David Lean might smile at cinematographer Guillermo Garza’s jaw-dropping compositions, golden sunsets silhouetting Arabian stallions against endless sands.
Lean might be less thrilled with the undemanding, slightly hammy narrative – a glossed-up B-movie at heart. The story begins when seventh-century emperor Kisra II orders tribal leaders to surrender their daughters as concubines. Among them is Princess Hind (British-Saudi actress and Line of Duty star Aiysha Hart), the fearless daughter of King Numan (Ghassan Massoud). Pursuing her is a Terminator-like commander, Jalabzeen (Sharlto Copley), promised safe passage home by Kisra II (played with theatrical gusto by Kingsley) if he captures her.
To borrow a Star Wars comparison, Mackie plays the Han Solo figure – a nameless bandit who agrees to rescue the princess in exchange for gold and a dagger, insisting repeatedly on the promised coin. It is refreshing to see him outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he brings a welcome steeliness. The relationship between him and Princess Hind isn’t mined for emotional weight – this is not a film that aims to move you – but there is genuine swagger to their escapes, especially a dexterous, saddle-swapping horseback chase.
British director Wyatt has major-league experience, having helmed 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and he throws everything at the screen here. Subtle it is not; the sequences in Kisra II’s palace – a grim antechamber where the emperor sits atop an impossibly high throne as enemies are dispatched beneath him (death by elephant) – veer into the same delirious excess as Gladiator II. Yet the thundering score, lavish production design and sheer confidence of the filmmaking make the spectacle difficult to resist.
Working with age-old themes – bravery, courage and loyalty – the film builds towards a huge, blood-soaked crescendo in the dunes. The technical excellence of the stunt work deserves full credit, as do the energies of the actors and extras, who commit entirely to this clash of titans. Only in one key sequence, where CG animals intrude, does the film’s old-school, "they did it for real" ethos falter. Still, Wyatt refrains from anything quite as bewildering as, say, Ridley Scott’s digital sharks in a Colosseum.
Desert Warrior may not redefine the historical epic, but it delivers what it promises – scale, spectacle and a vivid sense of place. And for the Red Sea Film Festival, it is a calling card of what Saudi filmmaking now aims to be.
Desert Warrior screens on Friday at Red Sea International Film Festival
