alshwenbear1 Why? hard to explain... not really! Without trying to get your sympathy for my reviews, I will share something not so private: my dad before teaching me how to ride a bicycle or to properly talk, he took me to movies, talked about every actor and director, therefore I love movies, he died 41 years ago, when I was eight years old, and while watching, "Day of the Falcon" I wished he had been sitting next to me, like he did on "Laurence of Arabia".On this times of so much abuse for Especial Effects and CG, a story like "Day of the Falcon" is so well crafted that easily translate to the movie screen, is so refreshing, so "cool" as we say these days, that after the ending I could still feel the magic of my long gone childhood after the matinées with warriors, pirates, horses and men in turbans or hats, dinosaurs and else, and because of that feeling, and magic, I recommend this almost unknown and pretty much, ignored movie.Every actor from the most famous or not, delivers, the photography, the sceneries, everything! Creates the ambiance that every movie should have for us in order to keep on loving films!

bigmarkthompson I have watched this film twice and deeply enjoy it. I understand how people could dislike it as I think it could be best described as a character(or culture) driven epic with a modest budget.The thing that most impresses me about this film is how even in its second viewing, I got caught up in the story and wasn't distracted by the acting of film-making. I would compare this film to "The Outlaw Josie Wales" in the way it quickly and completely puts you in a different world without having you question the methods involved. The story was very strong and the acting, directing, sets and other production quality's were such as they never took away or distracted from the story. Too often in historical's, westerns or other foreign setting movies I am left thinking about the actors accent, the sets, the historical backdrops and other distractions. This film was refreshing in its ability to tell a story without and thought of the fourth wall.

Tony Heck "I'll be richer then the King of England." After years of war Emir Nesib (Banderas) defeats Sultan Amar (Strong). They form a treaty saying that the desert strip that separated them will be a no man's land belonging to no one and as a guarantee Nesib takes Amar's two sons to raise them as his own. When a Texas oil man shows up and promises Nesib riches beyond his dreams he jumps at the chance but Amar does not agree. When Nesib sons one of Amar's sons to make a treaty it is not taken well and the son must now pick sides with his father or stay with the woman he loves. I will again open with a disclaimer...this is not my kind of movie. The acting is OK and the movie itself is not bad but to me movies like this are just a little too long and drawn out to really get into. If you are a fan of movies like Lawrence Of Arabia and stuff like that you will probably really enjoy this. To me it was OK but kind of boring, but again this isn't my kind of movie. Overall, if you are a fan of this genre you will most likely really enjoy this. I give it a B-.

moviexclusive Had 'Black Gold' been made about 50 years earlier, it would most certainly have been hailed as an epic – but as it is, audiences these days are looking for their dramas to be made up of more than just sweeping vistas and grand battle scenes in exotic locations, which is in fact the only selling points of this Jean-Jacques Annaud movie. Of course, it must be said too that the French director hails from a different era, he of similar epics like 'Seven Years in Tibet' and 'Enemy at the Gates' obviously belonging to an older breed of filmmakers who still subscribe to big scenic adventures.No wonder then that Annaud was chosen for this first major international co-production by the Doha Film Institute, which had intended for the movie to kickstart big-budget filmmaking in Qatar. Certainly you can see why writer Hans Ruesch's 1957 novel 'South of the Heart' was chosen as the source material – his fictional tale of an Arab world in the early 20th century divided by the arrival of Texan prospectors looking for oil has parallels in the conflicting ideologies in today's Muslim world and could very well enlighten its prevailing ambivalence towards the West.Pity then that what relevance this story might have is lost in Annaud's staid storytelling – which fails to build up any sort of tension between the conflicting minds and egos of the progressive but unscrupulous Emir Nesib (Antonio Banderas) and the devout traditionalist Sultan Amar (Mark Strong) – as well as in the contrived dialogue he has co-scripted with Menno Meyjes. Yes, it's hard to take anything seriously when all you're thinking that what the characters say could only have come from the deluded mind of a Hollywood script doctor.And what makes it worse is that it doesn't seem as if that doctor had much of a story to tell in the first place – as befitting the dialogue, the characterisations and the narrative are too simplistic. From start to finish, both Amar and Nesib simply remain the anchors at two ends of a continuum, with nothing to suggest why the former is so traditional and the latter so modernist.Slightly more interesting is Amar's youngest son, a bookish Islamic scholar named Auda (Tahar Rahim) who becomes the focus of the movie in its second half – sent by Nesib to try to plead peace with Amar, he instead finds himself hand-twisted to lead one of Amar's contingents in an impending war against Nesib. To make matters worse, he has also recently been married to Nesib's daughter Leyla (Freida Pinto), so technically he belongs to both families. Nonetheless, his transformation is no more than standard Hollywood trite, as he realises that neither father's belief is entirely right, and the best solution lies somewhere in the middle – i.e. to be a moderate.To distract you from the clunky storytelling, Annaud enlists the help of his cinematographer Jean-Marie Dreujou to wow you with some stunning sun-drenched visuals of the shimmering desert – thanks in no small part as well to the on location shooting in Tunisia and Qatar. It's easy to get swept up in the Orientalism, paired with Fabio Perrone's colourfully lavish (though definitely not historically accurate) costumes and James Horner's soaring score. Not forgetting of course the occasional grand battle sequence featuring scores of camels, old-fashioned tanks and many many more extras - coming after almost one half hours into the movie, their arrival is nonetheless too little and too late.Given the limited scope of their roles, it's no wonder that the international cast don't quite know how to play their respective characters. Even character actor Mark Strong seems hemmed in by a script that gives his character little development – ditto for Antonio Banderas, whose hammy performance and Spanish accent is especially out of place in a movie that already pays little respect for authenticities. Rahim also proves a weak lead for the second half, never fully convincing as the naïve one learning the realities of his world the hard way.So it is that even with a scale that recalls the handsome Hollywood epics of the 1950s, 'Black Gold' does itself no favours with a less than compelling storyline that thoroughly fails to exploit the relevance of the narrative for a similarly divided Muslim world today. If you haven't yet caught 'Lawrence of Arabia', well then this just might be your introduction to that bygone era of filmmaking; but its effect is akin to being in the desert - once the shimmer wears off, you'll find yourself left high and dry and thirsting for more.