New on Netflix: The Red Sea Diving Resort

This film was mostly negatively reviewed by professional reviewers but almost entirely because of SJW reasons that I'll get to later. I found it to be mostly pretty boring and also feel it was not a great (or ever very good) film. However i do not even remotely agree with the virtue-signalling reasons some professional reviewers indicated.

I suppose there are spoilers in here, but since it is a historical film I don't think there was ever any doubt what was going to happen in the story

source

The film is loosely-based on actual operation that were carried out in the early 80's to evacuate Jews from Ethiopia to Israel via Sudan. This was done covertly by doing close to what is described in the film: They established a fake diving resort and ushered persecuted Jews to rescue boats waiting offshore to carry the passengers to safety.

They were able to get away with this under the cover of "night diving."

source

Apparently, the film is very loosely based on fact but I suppose that is needed in order to create action for entertainment value. It is to be expected. However, I think they should have exaggerated a bit more because for the most part this film has a very "get on with it already" feel to it.

The critics lambasted this film because of what they are calling "White Savior Complex." If you don't know what that means... good. WSC is an apparently problematic portrayal in films of white people being the saviors of people who are not white and this is a no-no apparently, even though in this situation it is true.

The people who were put in these positions were not white because the film-makers wanted to make people of color seem powerless, the people were white in the film because they were mostly white in the actual incidents. They needed to be white tourists in order for their cover as foreign dive-resort owners and operators to function as cover. I suppose they could have been black foreigners, but that was not the case here. I find it exceptionally frustrating that just because the people were white and were helping black Ethiopians we are, in the minds of the critics, not supposed to admire what they accomplished.

Were they a little over-the-top in their portrayal of the protagonists' heroics? Well, of course they were, Captain America is playing the lead role after all.

source

I found the film dull because it is dull. It attempts to side-step this boredom by having almost cartoonish moments in order to break up the tedium but this is because the real story can't possibly fill 2 hours, but that is exactly what they did. Ben Kingsley and Greg Kinnear, who are both great actors, couldn't add much flavor to the film as their roles are rather inconsequential.

_{from the official Netflix channel}

My reasons for suggesting giving this one a miss is because I thought it wasn't very entertaining. It has nothing at all to do with the constant desire on the part of the media to interject social issues and racism into anything they can possibly touch.

My overall rating 4 / 10