Movie review - "Dark of the Sun" (1968) ****1/2

Have seen this film a bunch of times but it was a pleasure to view it again. Some thoughts:
* How stunning does it look? The photography, the location work in Jamaica, the sets...
* It has an intense atmosphere. Even the "settled" city at the beginning is a war zone, with cars overturned and armed soldiers everywhere. Every corner has danger. A night or two alone and you risk desk.
* I think the fact director Jack Cardiff was British helped him have more a feel for Africa - he gets the rough nuances of say Belgian administration in the way that an American director mightn't. It's a very colonial view though - the local Africans are very savage. (There are two nice black characters, Jim Brown and Bloke Modisane)
* The script is first rate. For the most part. It sets up brilliantly and efficiently - the lead characters, the mission, the ticking clock. The characters are distinctive and richly drawn. There are good twists, like the safe having a time, and the train rolling back to the Simbas.
* There are some script flaws. The girl part (Yvette Mimieux) is nothing. She starts of memorably, running from a massacre, but then just sort of hangs around. She's not even kidnapped at the end. I think she's mostly in the film to prove Taylor is straight even though the crux of the film is his love for Brown.
* The Bloke Modisane character becomes all important at the end but isn't in it much at the start. His part could've been beefed up more - or had his stuff given to the Olivier Despax character.
* The theme is muddled. The big fight between Taylor and Brown feels confusing. Like, Taylor is cynical and Brown scolds him for not thinking that Kenneth More was brave for dying, but Brown trusts Taylor with the diamonds and... um...? I get what they were going for - Brown's concern that Taylor stood for nothing - but it feels as though these scenes had been "worked" on and didn't quite fit in with the whole.
* It's a bleak film. They're going the mission for a black guy, admittedly, but Calvin Lockhart seems pretty ruthless. Two kids talk to the mercenaries then are shot by Peter Carsten. The nicest character, Jim Brown, is stabbed in the back. Nuns are raped. Kenneth More stays to help a mother give birth and they're all killed - so it was for nothing. Taylor kills Carsten, on entirely reasonable grounds (the guy deserves to die) but then he turns himself in. (It's a different ending - I always assume he'll change his mind).
* The acting is very good. Kenneth More, Brown, Taylor - it's perhaps Taylor's best performance.
* The action is great. There's two Taylor-Carsten fights - one with chain saws one on rivers which ends with Taylor breaking Carten's arms and stabbing him. The Simba attack is exciting, as is the final raid. It's one of the great sixties action films.