Wannabe Saudi epic Desert Warrior struggles to find its footing
Anthony Mackie and Aiysha Hart lead the charge in this mediocre period piece, notable only as the biggest Saudi production yet.
Photo: Vertical
There’s nothing quite like Rupert Wyatt’s Desert Warrior, a big-budget curio with dreams of being a Lawrence Of Arabia-style epic. Although it doesn’t achieve the greatness it seeks, it’s a sign of a growing Saudi film industry, one that used the grand scale of this period piece as a training program for future local productions. Shot in a part of the country that’s on the cusp of being redeveloped by controversial building projects, the film works best as a reflection of its own conflicted ambitions. While the story onscreen is dull and the performances uninspired, it’s the story around Desert Warrior that solidifies it as a strange chapter in a country’s self-promotional history.
Set in the seventh-century Sassanid Empire, Desert Warrior opens with text explaining that the ruling Emperor Kisra (Ben Kingsley) has demanded all princesses to be sent to him to be his concubines. Those who refuse will be killed. It’s the fate that potentially awaits Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart) and her father, until a bandit (Anthony Mackie) captures them first. Originally only interested in the money—very Han Solo of him—Mackie ends up helping the princess, who’s on the run from the emperor’s army and mercenary forces. However, after her father is killed by the emperor, Hind becomes Queen and decides to take on the empire to assert her and her people’s freedom. But first she must convince other tribes to join in her struggle, assembling a ragtag army that will have to outsmart Emperor Kisra’s larger battalions.
Wyatt, who made a name for himself with 2011’s Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, struggles with the challenge of creating an epic of this size with authenticity. Desert Warrior is the largest film produced in the region thus far, and served as on-the-job training for many in the fledgling Saudi film industry. Shot in 2021 for a budget of about $150 million, including funds from the Saudi government through MBC Studios, Desert Warrior sometimes puts the money on screen, relying heavily on practical settings, lots of extras, and some real animals to create the sense of a bombastic action movie. Other moments, like when Emperor Kisra is demanding Princess Hind be brought to him, look like an actor talking to an empty room, done up to look like a coliseum with people chanting in the background. Kingsley can’t even be bothered to sell the illusion in his bit part, looking as if he was waiting to be called at the DMV, barely awake enough to respond when spoken to.
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