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Hollywood has a long history of turning heroic true stories into cinematic thrillers. The best of them take harrowing stories of danger and make them resonant to audiences sitting comfortably in theaters or, increasingly, on their couches. They take us there through time and geography, and often ask us what we would do in the same situation, whether we would rise to the occasion and be heroes ourselves. And the really great ones offer something that a non-fiction book cannot, grounding true stories in high drama with three-dimensional characters who feel real. They remind us of the humanity embedded in heroism. Gideon Raff ’s “The Red Sea Diving Resort,” unceremoniously dumped on Netflix today, does none of these things. It turns real heroes into generic tropes and real victims into manipulative props. Great hero stories leave the viewer feeling inspired by the potential within the human condition. This one will just leave you depressed.

“The Red Sea Diving Resort” tells the true story of a group of Mossad agents in the early ‘80s who rescued hundreds of Jewish-Ethiopian refugees though Sudan and then back to Israel. The tone of the film is set by its opening scene, in which we watch Ethiopians fleeing gun-toting villains to nearby trucks. Of course, a child is missing. He must be in the field playing airplane. The only person who can save him is the heroic Ari Levinson ( Chris Evans ), who gets to the boy seconds before automatic gunfire nearly tears him apart. Child in jeopardy, check. White savior, check. Near-tragedy turned into action scene, check.

Ari and his team are captured, and forced to return to Israel, but our hero can’t sleep knowing that there are Jewish-Ethiopians who need his help, including friend Kebede Bimro (a miserably wasted Michael K. Williams , who disappears for half the movie and is given nothing to work with beyond his dedication when he returns). And so he devises a plan. The Israeli government will purchase an abandoned fishing resort on the coast of the Sudan – the one that gives the film its title – and his team will use it to free those still stuck in Ethiopia. The team includes the always-reticent Sammy Navon ( Alessandro Nivola ), tough Rachel Reiter ( Haley Bennett ), Jake Wolf ( Michiel Huisman ), and Max Rose ( Alex Hassell ). Greg Kinnear and Ben Kingsley show up as suits who can’t believe how daring and reckless Ari is behaving – at one point, he is literally described out loud as “reckless and out of control.” The team actually ends up running the resort as a business after they realize it makes for a better cover if it looks like they have a reason to be there.

That last detail, while possibly historically accurate, leads to one of the most jarring tonal shifts in any film in years. After they decide to keep the resort open, Raff stages a wacky hotel business montage set to Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” complete with ‘80s-style editing and Nivola noodling the song on an acoustic guitar. He follows that up immediately with a scene of the film’s villain, Col. Abdel Ahmed ( Chris Chalk , who actually gives the best performance, exuding some serious menace), interrogating refugees about how their numbers are dwindling by shooting several of them in the head, execution-style. To say it’s abrupt, would be kind. It’s truly jaw-dropping.

At least that drastic tonal jump is worth remembering, as awful as it is, because most of “Red Sea Diving Resort” is just dispiritingly forgettable. It’s the kind of script that underlines and highlights every character trait and motivation – the dialogue about leaving no one behind would sound hackneyed and forced on a TV movie in the ‘80s much less in what should be a theatrical one 40 years later. These characters are always either talking about how dangerous the mission is, how important the mission is, or the incredible things they accomplished during the mission. These are heroes , and don’t you forget it. But they’re never real people.

Of course, no one would dare to suggest that what the Mossad agents who actually saved lives through the Red Sea Diving Resort accomplished wasn’t more heroic than anything I’ll do in my life, but that fact doesn’t make the movie about them work. It feels like everyone involved in “The Red Sea Diving Resort” presumed the tale itself was so moving that they didn’t need to do much to make it into an inspirational movie. It’s a story that most viewers won’t know before they watch the film. And won’t really feel like they know after, either.   

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film Credits

The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019)

129 minutes

Chris Evans as Ari Levinson

Haley Bennett as Rachel Reiter

Ben Kingsley as Ethan Levin

Michiel Huisman as Jacob 'Jake' Wolf

Alessandro Nivola as Sammy Navon

Michael Kenneth Williams as Kabede Bimro

Greg Kinnear as Walton Bowen

Alona Tal as Sarah Levinson

Chris Chalk as Col. Abdel Ahmed

Mark Ivanir as Barack Isaacs

Alex Hassell as Max Rose

• Gideon Raff

Cinematographer

• Robert Schaefer
• Tim Squyres
• Mychael Danna

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The red sea diving resort, common sense media reviewers.

Great true story becomes uninspired film; violence, language

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Values promoted: fighting for a righteous cause, l

Recognizes various kinds of courage: reckless, tho

War action: machine gun fire, snipers, multiple pe

Skimpy bathing suits, including topless, in one sc

Countless uses of "f--k," "s--t." Others: "a--hole

Occasional social drinking. Multiple characters sm

Parents need to know that The Red Sea Diving Resort is a wartime drama inspired by a true story. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ethiopian Jews in large numbers, marginalized in their country and with few resources, made a valiant effort to migrate to Israel, specifically Jerusalem. Harrowing journeys were…

Positive Messages

Values promoted: fighting for a righteous cause, loyalty, having empathy for those who cannot act for themselves, putting aside grievances and focusing on what's important.

Positive Role Models

Recognizes various kinds of courage: reckless, thoughtful, self-sacrificing, and responding to a higher purpose. Main character is reckless but resourceful, determined, and lucky. Lone female character is as brave and competent as her male allies. White folks rescue whole communities of black Ethiopian Jews.

Violence & Scariness

War action: machine gun fire, snipers, multiple people shot at close range, brutal hand-to-hand combat (one fight shows a woman holding her own), bloody bodies en masse. Suspenseful chases, narrow escapes, innocents under assault from villainous armed men.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Skimpy bathing suits, including topless, in one scene. Rear view of naked male.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Countless uses of "f--k," "s--t." Others: "a--hole," 'hell," "wild in the sack."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Occasional social drinking. Multiple characters smoke cigarettes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Red Sea Diving Resort is a wartime drama inspired by a true story. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ethiopian Jews in large numbers, marginalized in their country and with few resources, made a valiant effort to migrate to Israel, specifically Jerusalem. Harrowing journeys were common. One notable and continuing rescue effort during this period was conducted by members of the Mossad, Israeli's intelligence service. This movie recounts that effort. Suspense and violence are core elements of the film: gunfire, including vicious, repeated point-blank killings; intense transport chases; narrow escapes; brutal hand-to-hand combat. There are multiple scenes in which fleeing refugees and their determined rescuers come under enemy fire. Frequent expletives are heard (i.e., "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," "hell"). Skimpy bikinis (including topless) are seen briefly in one beach sequence; the backside of a naked man is shown. Characters drink alcohol in several scenes; lots of cigarette smoking, one cigar. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Kids say (2)

Based on 1 parent review

Red Sea Diving Resort

What's the story.

Ari Levinson ( Chris Evans ) is a heroic Israeli intelligence officer in THE RED SEA DIVING RESORT. After leading a desperate group of Jewish Ethiopians across the border into The Sudan and hiding them in a refugee center, Ari and his teammates, including Sammy ( Alessandro Nivola ), are ordered back to Mossad headquarters where Ethan ( Ben Kingsley ) is the boss. There, still concerned about the plight of those he rescued and their leader Kabeda ( Michael Kenneth Williams ), Ari comes up with an orthodox plan to get them to their final destination...Jerusalem. Using an abandoned, beachside hotel -- The Red Sea Diving Resort -- as a base, the Ethiopians can be smuggled out of Sudan by boat to Israel. Convincing his superiors that he can make it work, and recruiting a team of trusted allies, including Sammy, Rachel ( Haley Bennett ), Jake ( Michael Huisman ), and Max ( Alex Hassell ), Ari sets the plan in motion. The sham resort is up and "running" when the crew makes its first successful nighttime rescue. Then another, and another, until the entire operation is threatened by Sudanese Colonel Abdul Ahmed (Chris Chalk), whose relentless efforts to stop them have dire results.

Is It Any Good?

A widely-known true story spills the beans on the outcome, but unfortunately this well-intentioned movie as a whole is also predictable. From the opening sequence when a little boy gets separated from his family and " Captain America " is on the scene, is there any doubt? The winning concept of a decrepit resort being resurrected as a stopover spot for the daring rescue of scores of despairing refugees is the best thing about the film. When German tourists mistake the undercover operation for the real thing, The Red Sea Diving Resort has moments of originality and wit. Otherwise, not so much.

Forced conflict between heroes is just that, forced. A cowboy Mossad operative feels like every cowboy cop when there's no depth to the character (a lame effort at giving Ari an estranged family is even cornier that it should have been). And the movie can't escape from the fact that it's another in what is sometimes called a "white savior" view of historical events. Little effort, if any, is made to bring an emotional heart to the despairing but hopeful people at the story's center. Coming in at over two hours, it feels even longer than that. The movie isn't a total dud, because it gives at least some exposure to what was surely a operation of tremendous import when it occurred, and has more than a little resonance given the immigrant crises still in play decades later.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in The Red Sea Diving Resort. Battle sequences in war movies are expected. Do you think those expectations prepare audiences for that violence? Lessen the impact? Why is it important for families to be aware of the impact of violence, even wartime action, on kids ?

Find out the difference between movies that are labeled "a true story," "inspired by a true story" or "based on a true story." Does it matter? Why?

A movie's setting and/or location can be considered a character in the film. How is the desert setting in The Red Sea Diving Resort a crucial element in the story? In what ways might it be thought of as a character?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : July 31, 2019
• Cast : Chris Evans , Alessandro Nivola , Haley Bennett
• Director : Gideon Raff
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Activism , Adventures , History
• Run time : 129 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : February 18, 2023

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‘the red sea diving resort’: film review.

Chris Evans plays an Israeli Mossad agent who devises a scheme to use an abandoned seaside resort as a cover while smuggling Jewish Ethiopian refugees to Israel in Gideon Raff's Netflix thriller 'The Red Sea Diving Resort.'

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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You sometimes have to wonder if spy agencies don’t design operations with film deals in mind. That surely must have been the case with the Israeli Mossad’s daring scheme to smuggle Ethiopian Jews out of a Sudanese refugee camp, which serves as the inspiration for Gideon Raff’s Netflix feature. If the events depicted in The Red Sea Diving Resort hadn’t actually (sort of) happened, the pic would be dismissed as sheer fantasy.

Not that the plot elements in the 1980-set film aren’t fantastical. Chris Evans transitions from playing Captain America to a Mossad agent for the starring role, a piece of casting which on the surface seems unlikely given his all-American looks but actually works in the story’s context. As the story begins, his character, Ari Levinson (a composite, as are most of the others shown), is working with a rebel leader, Kabede (Michael K. Williams, The Wire ), to smuggle oppressed Ethiopian Jews out of the country, although the farthest they’re able to get them is a Sudanese camp.

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Release date: Jul 31, 2019

Ari comes up with an unlikely idea involving the Mossad surreptitiously leasing an abandoned seaside hotel and using it as a base camp for nighttime missions raiding the camp and escorting the Ethiopians to the shore where they can be picked up by waiting Israeli ships. He presents the idea to his supervisor (Ben Kingsley, one of the few actors on the planet fully capable of being fully convincing as either a notorious Nazi or an Israel intelligence officer), who not surprisingly reacts with skepticism. Even more dubious is the spy agency’s chief (Mark Ivanir), whose main role in the story seems to be fulminating in blustery fashion, both before and after he okays the risky operation.

Cue the inevitable “assembling the team” sequence, presented here in such lighthearted fashion that you begin wondering whether the mission involves rescuing desperate refugees or robbing a Las Vegas casino. The recruits are an internationally diverse lot, including flight attendant Rachel (Haley Bennett, The Girl on the Train ), whose mastery of hand-to-combat is demonstrated when she takes down a lecherous co-worker; medical doctor Sammy (Alessandro Nivola, The Art of Self-Defense ), who chafes at Ari’s impulsive risk-taking); diving expert Jake (Michiel Huisman, Game of Thrones ), a ladies man who rocks a banana hammock; and sharpshooter Max (Alex Hassell, currently seen as Translucent on Amazon’s The Boys ).

Each member of the team is assigned a new identity, with one designated as being Maltese, because, as Ari explains, “No one knows what language people in Malta speak.”

When a group of German tourists accidentally arrive at the resort and expect to be checked in, the team is forced to improvise. But Ari quickly realizes that they’ve stumbled on the perfect cover, using the actual guests to disguise the team’s risky activities. Director-screenwriter Raff (no stranger to the thematic terrain, being the creator of Prisoners of War , the Israel series later adapted into Showtime’s Homeland ) takes advantage of the situation’s absurdity by delivering a cheeky montage, accompanied by Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” contrasting the agents’ cheesy resort hosting duties with their nighttime espionage.

The frequent shifting in tone isn’t always to the film’s advantage. The comic moments often mesh uneasily with the more conventional suspenseful passages, many involving the frequent visits to the resort by a suspicious Sudanese colonel (a genuinely menacing Chris Chalk, Gotham ) who knows that something fishy is going on but can’t prove it.

But the movie, which will inevitably spur comparisons to such similar efforts as Argo , works well enough on its own terms, with Mychael Danna’s synthesizer-heavy score providing a suitably retro vibe. It would have certainly proved beneficial if rebel leader Kabede had received greater emphasis; although the Ethiopian character introduces the story via a voiceover, he remains sadly underutilized throughout. The pacing, too, is problematic, with too many talky digressive scenes (some involving a cynical CIA agent, well played by Greg Kinnear) sapping the overlong film of narrative momentum.

Evans plays hunky and sincere as effectively here as he does in the MCU, showing off his chiseled physique in many shirtless scenes. But he’s upstaged by several of the supporting players whose characters are more colorful, especially Huisman as the equally ripped Jake and Bennett as the agent equally versed in martial arts and aerobics instruction.

As if to forestall any viewer skepticism, the end credits feature footage of the real-life figures involved in the outlandish events. It was somehow comforting to see that the banana-hammock bathing suit wasn’t a cinematic invention.

Production companies: Bron Studios, EMAJ, G. Raff, in association with Creative Wealth Media Distributor: Netflix Cast: Chris Evans, Haley Bennett, Alessandro Nivola, Michael Kenneth Williams, Michiel Huisman, Alex Hassell, Mark Ivanir, Greg Kinnear, Ben Kingsley Director-screenwriter: Gideon Raff Producers: Alexandra Milchan, Gideon Raff, Aaron L. Gilbert Executive producers: Jason Cloth, David Gendron, Ali Jazayeri, Alex Lebovici, Andrew Pollack, Steve Ponce, Steven Thibault, Philip Waley Director of photography: Roberto Schaefer Production designer: Jeff Mann Editor: Tim Squyres Composer: Mychael Danna Costume designers: Neil McClean, Ruth Myers

130 minutes

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The Red Sea Diving Resort Reviews

When it comes to planning your weekend, make sure this new Netflix film is your last resort.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 20, 2022

Raff saw an opportunity with this tale, took it, and didn't bother to do it justice. That's pretty much all there is to say.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jun 8, 2020

Even though it's an action film, it errs on the side of having an academic style. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 12, 2019

Why make this rushed, sloppy and generic piece of Israeli triumphalism now? Who stands to gain?

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 4, 2019

If you want something to put on in the background while you clean, turn on Red Sea Diving Resort. The soundtrack will alert you to which scenes to watch.

Full Review | Sep 2, 2019

It's an unfortunate white savior flick, for whatever that implies.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 17, 2019

The Red Sea Diving Resort is built around a narrative with massive potential, but the movie never quite delivers, reducing it to a film that is merely adequate.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Aug 16, 2019

In The Red Sea Diving Resort, a rescuer states, "We leave no one behind." That becomes the motto of the film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 15, 2019

The Red Sea Diving Resort didn't need hamfisted, overly explanatory and preachy dialogue, to tell its tale. But that's what it has, which does a disservice to the very real people who lived and died this story.

Full Review | Aug 12, 2019

Because it is based on true facts the movie has a leg up. Chris Evans leads a good cast in telling a fascinating story.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 10, 2019

The first act does work well but then the proposal is not satisfactorily developed. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 9, 2019

Sappy lines like, "We're all just refugees, aren't we?" jar against the clearly intended grave portents of today's ongoing global free-movement crisis.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 9, 2019

Chris Evans stars in Gideon Raff's oversimplified yet suspenseful action-thriller - and the end credits feature real-life footage of those involved in the rescue.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 8, 2019

Great true story becomes uninspired film; violence, language

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 6, 2019

'Red Sea' undoubtedly has a Hollywood spit shine, with its modern musical score, heavy stylization and story conveniences. That said, the act of heroism and human sincerity at its center keep it sharp and worthwhile.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 5, 2019

Chooses star-vehicle bravura over the historical plight that really matters

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 5, 2019

The problem... is that it doesn't feel particularly interested in the political intricacies of the situation and it's definitely not interested in presenting the perspective of the Ethiopian refugees with any psychological subtlety.

Full Review | Aug 5, 2019

It's like if a Rambo movie decided to be about something meaningful.

A large part of the problem is the casting of Chris Evans as the leader of the Israeli spy ring that set up the hotel. He is most known for playing Captain America and seems not to have put aside his shield for this film.

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/4 | Aug 5, 2019

Raff missed the opportunity to shake the narrative further by showing Kabede's daring rescue efforts from his perspective.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Aug 4, 2019

Screen Rant

The red sea diving resort review: chris evans is a big damn hero, the red sea diving resort blends war drama with spy thriller levity, making for an at times uneven, but enjoyable movie in which chris evans shines..

Earlier this year, Netflix acquired  The Red Sea Diving Resort , a film about Israeli agents helping Jewish Ethiopian refugees flee from Ethiopia through Sudan to Israel. Because of the unique mission the movie recounts - in which the Israeli agents use a diving resort as a front to smuggle refugees out of Sudan - The Red Sea Diving Resort walks a thin line between light-hearted action-thriller and the more dramatic real world suffering of the Ethiopian refugees.  The Red Sea Diving Resort blends war drama with spy thriller levity, making for an at times uneven, but enjoyable movie in which Chris Evans shines.

Evans stars as Ari Levinson, a Mossad agent dedicated to getting all the Jewish Ethiopian refugees safely to Israel, even if it means taking big risks along the way. However, when he's arrested after escorting a group lead by Kebede Bimro (Michael K. Williams) to a refugee camp in Sudan, he's sent back to Israel to report to his boss, Ethan Levin (Ben Kingsley). While is Israel, he devises a new plan: Use an abandoned resort in Sudan as a front to smuggle refugees onto covert Israeli ships just off the coast. There are a few hiccups along the way, including actual guests arriving at their fake resort, and the scrutiny of local Colonel Abdel Ahmed (Chris Chalk), but they're more successful than anyone expected. As Sudan's own political climate grows unstable, though, continuing with the Red Sea Diving Resort becomes much riskier - but Ari remains committed to saving as many refugees as possible.

Israeli filmmaker Gideon Raff serves as writer and director on  The Red Sea Diving Resort , which accounts for the film's perspective. The film attempts to balance the narrative so that it's not entirely about the Israeli agents, giving time to Williams' Kebede and Chalk's Colonel as well as a nameless young refugee. But The Red Sea Diving Resort is undoubtedly about Ari and his team: Rachel Reiter (Haley Bennett), Jake Wolf (Michiel Huisman), Sammy Navon (Alessandro Nivola) and Max Rose (Alex Hassell). Because of this, The Red Sea Diving Resort  presents a white savior narrative, in which the stories of the white Israeli agents are more of the focus than of the Ethiopian Jews they're saving. It's undoubtedly a consequence of Raff focusing much of the narrative on Ari and his team, and even the decision to position Kebede as the narrator with opening and closing voiceover doesn't detract from Red Sea Diving Resort being Ari's story more than anyone else's.

Because The Red Sea Diving Resort is Ari's story, Evans is afforded the meatiest role in the film and he excels in playing another big damn hero type - one that isn't too far off from the Captain America role that propelled him to action leading man status. Here, though, Evans plays a more roguish government agent, giving him a chance to be charming even as Ari sticks to his principles. What little depth there is to the character of Ari is provided in brief expository dialogue and Evans' performance, but it feels like an entire subplot with Ari's wife was cut. Instead, The Red Sea Diving Resort is rounded out by the cast playing Ari's team, who work well together, particularly Nivola as Ari's closest friend Sammy; Sammy and Ari's dynamic works well to balance the action-heavy story in a human element. Williams and Chalk are also strong co-stars, but are given much less to work with. Altogether, it's a solid cast lead by a good performance from Evans.

Overall, though, The Red Sea Diving Resort comes across like Raff wasn't sure if he wanted to make an Ocean's 11 style spy thriller or a more dramatic war drama akin to Blood Diamond . The result is an oddly light-hearted refugee action-thriller that includes both montages of Evans doing push-ups in short-shorts and closeups on dead Ethiopian refugees murdered by the Sudanese army. Somehow, it actually works better than expected. For the most part, Raff is able to tie all the disparate elements of the movie together for a thematically consistent story, even if sacrifices were made to do so. Namely, Raff uses dead or tortured Ethiopians to establish stakes for the white characters, but does little to truly develop the refugees as characters aside from Kebede.

While that was Raff's choice as filmmaker, and may have made for a more succinct story, some viewers may understandably take issue with The Red Sea Diving Resort's portrayal of its Ethiopian characters through a white savior narrative (as well as the Zionist messaging of the film). As such, The Red Sea Diving Resort isn't necessary viewing for all movie fans, but should entertain those already keen to give it a chance. In fact, the movie may be most enjoyed by fans of Evans who want to see him in roles different than Captain America (but not too different) or those interested in the historical premise, but who know a movie can't tell the whole story. The Red Sea Diving Resort operates in a weird middle ground between spy thriller and war drama that may be the perfect blend of genres for some, but may be the worst of each for other viewers. Thankfully, with The Red Sea Diving Resort releasing on Netflix, the barrier of entry is low, and if viewers aren't captivated, they can easily turn it off.

The Red Sea Diving Resort  is now streaming on Netflix. It is 129 minutes long and rated TV-MA.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

Film Review: ‘The Red Sea Diving Resort’

The astonishing story of a real-life rescue mission of Ethiopian Jews by Israeli Mossad agents, this liberally fictionalized Netflix thriller plays the “white savior complex” to shameful extremes.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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“There’s so much to see and do in Arous,” read the brochure for a Sudanese vacation spot where visitors could go scuba diving amid reefs “made famous by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Hans Hass.” Never mind that Sudan was in a state of civil war and no place for tourists in the early 1980s. European tourists came anyway, oblivious to the fact that the exotic getaway — rechristened “The Red Sea Diving Resort” for the Netflix film of the same name — was a front for a Mossad-run rescue mission: Israeli agents used Arous to smuggle Ethiopian Jews out of refugee camps to the coast, where offshore boats could ferry them to Jerusalem.

The true story of this operation is so wild you couldn’t make it up — the kind of recently declassified real-life operation that savvy producers could conceivably pitch as a cross between Ben Affleck’s “Argo” and Steven Spielberg’s “Munich.” The film, on the other hand, is a bust, reducing this liberally fictionalized real-life adventure to a series of petty squabbles among super-hot foreigners. American audiences typically adore “white savior movies,” but this one pushes the stereotype to such an extreme (picture Chris Evans and “Game of Thrones” hunk Michiel Huisman as ripped Jewish heroes, swooping in to save the day), it’s impossible to ignore how badly the film marginalizes the courageous Ethiopian refugees about whom it purports to care so deeply.

One can tell from the opening scene — in which Evans arrives at the last second to save a lost Ethiopian boy, moments before a vicious African warlord has the chance to shoot the unarmed child — what kind of movie “The Red Sea Diving Resort” will prove to be. Evans is playing Ari Levinson, an admirably reckless Secret Service agent who refuses to leave a single person behind. Ari is fully committed to Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin’s goal of repatriating (if that’s the word) the surviving members of Beta Israel, an isolated community of Ethiopian Jews whose history no one quite knows, but whose future was seriously endangered by persecution and famine at the time.

In writer-director Gideon Raff ’s grossly oversimplified script, it is Ari who hatches the wild idea to lease an abandoned hotel along the shores of the Red Sea, where Ethiopian Jews who’d made the dangerous trek to Sudan could be smuggled out of the country. At the time, Sudan was actively hostile to the state of Israel (it was there, in 1967, that the Arab League resolved “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it”), so such a plan would have to be carried out by individuals with no obvious ties to the country. Hence a cast of the most goyish-looking actors you can imagine: Evans, Huisman, Haley Bennett (who plays a stewardess with a mean choke hold) and Alessandro Nivola (a field doctor whose primary function is to second-guess Ari’s semi-improvised plans).

Back in Israel, the team answers to Ben Kingsley, who could play this kind of skeptical taskmaster in his sleep, and Mossad boss Barack Isaacs (Mark Ivanir), who shouts a lot, clenching and unclenching his fist dramatically during extractions from a control center far removed from the action. Meanwhile, in Africa, the toughest work clearly falls to the local guides who led the perilous Jewish exodus from Ethiopia to the Gedaref Refugee Camp. Raff composites all these heroes into a single character, Kabede Bimro (played by Michael Kenneth Williams, Omar of “The Wire”), the film’s only nonwhite ally of note.

Told in heavy-handed, pseudo-Spielbergian strokes, the story here is clearly being presented through the lens of Israeli heroism, and there’s no diminishing the enormous risks the characters’ real-life counterparts took to rescue thousands of lives. But it doesn’t take much to recognize that the story is far more interesting when viewed from Kabede’s perspective: Here was a modern-day Moses leading a persecuted people to the Promised Land. And even though Ari claims he won’t leave anyone behind, it is Kabede who must repeatedly convince him to keep going when obstacles arrive. In the best-case version of this story, this part would warrant an Oscar-worthy performance, whereas Williams can’t make much of the one-dimensional role, playing him as yet another victim in need of saving.

But saving from what, exactly? On that count, the movie is distressingly unclear, inventing a menacing Sudanese army officer, Col. Abdel Ahmed (Chris Chalk), to personify the danger. Because the United Nations offers aid money for each refugee, the colonel is motivated to keep the Ethiopian Jews imprisoned at Gedaref, becoming increasingly agitated as hundreds disappear from the camp. Why, then, would he execute dozens of their kind, knowing it would cost him this incentive while almost surely attracting the scrutiny of the American ambassador (Greg Kinnear)?

Raff’s script proves so sketchy on the historical situation that audiences will be hard-pressed to summarize the strange dynamic the film depicts, focusing instead on the absurdities encountered along the way — like the scene where they bribe a local official while his boss can be heard executing his political enemies just off-screen. Considering how different the customs are in this part of the world, many films assume an almost satirical approach when confronting the lawlessness and corruption found there, evident in everything from Bryan Buckley’s irreverent “Pirates of Somalia” to Mads Brügger’s outrageous “The Ambassador.”

Bizarrely, Raff’s film never strikes a consistent tone, awkwardly switching styles — of acting, shooting and score — every few scenes. (For example, Bennett’s introduction, in which she subdues a fellow flight attendant who harasses her on the job, plays like a corny B-movie unto itself.) Even the scene transitions vary, as if editor Tim Squyres were determined to try every option Final Cut offers, from vertical blinds to horizontal wipes. But the real mystery is how the pair wound up with a 130-minute film that focuses primarily on a running disagreement between Evans’ and Nivola’s characters, while never adequately representing the political situation that necessitated such an elaborate operation. It’s as if somewhere along the way, they decided audiences don’t care nearly as much about the Ethiopian Jews as they do seeing their white saviors shirtless.

Reviewed at Netflix screening room, Los Angeles, July 25, 2019. Running time: 130 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix Films release and presentation of a Bron Studios, Emjay, G. Raff production, in association with Creative Entertainment. Producers: Alexandra Milchan, Gideon Raff, Aaron L. Gilbert.
• Crew: Director, writer: Gideo Raff. Camera (color, widescreen): Roberto Schaefer. Editor: Tim Squyres. Music: Mychael Danna.
• With: Chris Evans, Haley Bennett, Alessandro Nivola, Michael Kenneth Williams , Michiel Huisman, Alex Hassell, Mark Ivanir, Greg Kinnear, Ben Kingsley. (English, Sudanese dialogue)

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'The Red Sea Diving Resort' Review: Netflix's Refugee Drama Is Well-Intentioned And Timely

When you see your brother or your sister struggling, you must not remain silent. Do not remain still. Go to their aid. Help them. Last week, we spent a little bit of time talking about the very real crisis that wreaked havoc on Ethiopia through the '70s and '80s. Specifically, we focused on the crisis of the Ethiopian Jews. We did so to discuss the subject matter of Netflix's most recent film, The Red Sea Diving Resort . Now that I've had a chance to check out the film, I figured it was only appropriate to talk about the film itself. One of the first things The Red Sea Diving Resort does is acknowledge that the crisis in Ethiopia wasn't solely faced by their Jewish population, and that the film will only be focusing on their story. It's an unnecessary but appreciated context. After the brief voice over acknowledgement from Kabede (Michael Kenneth Williams), the story primarily focuses on Ari Levinson (Chris Evans) and his team. Ari's a "screw the rules" upstart focused on saving the refugees whatever the cost, even if that cost is human life. His best friend, Sammy (Alessandro Nivola) plays his polar opposite. The two will come to blows over their differences before the final credits roll. They're joined by unexpected muscle, Rachel (Haley Bennett); the diving expert, Jake (Michiel Huisman); and hitman, Max (Alex Hassell).  There are a few warts, like some weird fadeouts and a couple of tertiary stories that make little sense, but The Red Sea Diving Resort has some worthwhile conversations woven into the plot. Ari and Sammy playing opposite extremes highlights an important debate between when it's time to throw out the rulebook and do whatever we can to save those in need, and when it's time to play it cautious lest we lose more people than we save. Jake's character, though mostly aloof throughout the majority of the heavy subject matter, has a line early on acknowledging that one of the worst genocides in history was occurring, but no one cared because it was happening in Africa. There's also an extremely relevant closing monologue from Kabede quoted at the start of this review. Despite the refugee's leader being given the opening and closing monologues, very little of the story is allowed to focus on him and his people. Kabede is the only one we know by name. Though part of that can be chalked up to the nature of the film, and the ever-revolving door of refugees they're smuggling out of the country, it would have been nice to have been allowed more of a connection with the people the team was saving. I would have been willing to sacrifice at least two Chris Evans workout moments for this!  That admittedly major complaint aside, I enjoyed the film. It showcases some difficult moments, highlighting just what these people are trying to flee from. A woman chooses to drown rather than be further abused or to see any more of her people slaughtered, and we're shown several terrifying displays of force from the monstrous government figures. Heather, the sole female of the primary team, is given more to do than simply standing around and looking pretty (low bar, but still something I actively watch for). And, while it sugars up some pretty grim history, it does so in the ways we expect from Hollywood rather than laying it on too thick. In the article discussing the aforementioned history, I mentioned that my biggest hope was that films like these would help raise awareness and empathy for the refugee crises happening around the globe. The Red Sea Diving Resort closes with Kabede's monologue and a note that there are over sixty-five million displaced refugees around the world. That's nearly double the population of Canada, all trying to flee humanitarian crises and often being met with apathy by both governments and the citizens of the countries they're trying to flee to. So, whether this film ends up being for you, or leaves you rolling your eyes, I hope you take time to look up how you can help refugees in your area. Do it for Kabede! 

Review: Chris Evans leads ‘Red Sea Diving Resort,’ a mission of mercy that plays like ‘Argo’-’Schindler’ lite

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Interesting and timely, “The Red Sea Diving Resort” highlights the plight of refugees and casts those helping them in a heroic light, but it doesn’t quite deliver dramatically.

The title might evoke a “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”-type genteel comedy, but this is a sometimes stark depiction of operatives led by an independent-thinking Mossad agent ( Chris Evans ) trying to smuggle Ethiopian Jewish refugees out of Africa. There are echoes of other films, as he persuades the Israeli government to fund an elaborate ruse for the (only recently declassified) real-life operation. Instead of a fake movie, as in “Argo,” it’s a fake hotel, which the highly trained spies find themselves having to staff when real tourists arrive. The shepherding of Jewish refugees calls to mind “Schindler’s List” or “Hotel Rwanda” (it’s set in Sudan), but, unfortunately, “Red Sea” doesn’t deliver the stress, suspense or emotional punch of any of those films.

The movie’s not bad; it’s just fine. The acting is good, particularly by Michael K. Williams as a heroic Ethiopian, Chris Chalk as a menacing colonel, and Alessandro Nivola as the team’s doctor and Evans’ character’s best friend. Nivola is simply good in every movie he’s in, no matter the material. Evans is a welcome presence.

However, “Red Sea” lacks tension. It’s rife with missed opportunities to make us worry about the safety of the spies and the refugees. Small things here and there — filmmaker decisions — make us question the film’s accuracy. Reliance on cliché sabotages the experience — Evans’ Ari Levinson is dedicated to his job, but damn it, why can’t he follow the rules? “This job pays in migraines,” complains his wise-but-caring boss (Ben Kingsley).

Nail-on-the-head images (Jewish refugees crossing the desert, anyone?) and dialogue don’t help. “We’re all just refugees, aren’t we?” says an agent played by Haley Bennett on the recitation of Levinson’s backstory. Filmmakers might want to avoid scripting the former Captain America to heroically declare, “We leave no one behind” for a while. A potentially rich vein for comedy — spies ad libbing as fake hotel employees — goes largely untapped. The result is a lack of personality to the film, written and directed by Gideon Raff, creator of the Israeli series on which Showtime’s “Homeland” is based.

“Red Sea” has genuine-seeming concern for the refugees it depicts, but doesn’t memorably capture the impressive true tale.

'The Red Sea Diving Resort'

Not rated Running time: 2 hours, 9 minutes Playing: Available July 31 on Netflix

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The Red Sea Diving Resort Review: A Lifeless Thriller That’s Not Worth the Trip

Chris Evans’ first post-Marvel venture – the bland historical thriller, The Red Sea Diving Resort – is now available on Netflix…

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For Gideon Raff’s thriller The Red Sea Diving Resort , now streaming on Netflix , the writing is on the wall from the get-go. Opening in the early 1980s, in rural Ethiopia, we find a group of Mossad agents shepherding a handful of Ethiopian Jews out of the country and to the perceived safety of Jerusalem. As the truck prepares to leave, one agent, Ari Levinson (played by America’s now-departed ass, Chris Evans), realizes there’s a child missing and sprints back through the fields to rescue an oblivious young boy. It’s a moment of bravado that tells you exactly the kind of film The Red Sea Diving Resort intends to be.

Based on true events, The Red Sea Diving Resort dramatizes the plight of Ethiopian Jews attempting to flee their country to Israel. What writer-director Raff zooms in on is one savvy, outrageous idea from Evans’ reckless protagonist: to reopen a beachside hotel on the Sudanese coast and use it as a front to ship persecuted Jews out of the country.

It’s a deeply complex story, both politically and culturally, and a story that deserves better than Raff’s script, which truncates the narrative’s nuances and amalgamates key players. He opts for easy action-thriller shorthand and, most egregiously, sidelines the refugees whose struggle the film seemingly wants to depict.  

Netflix quietly dumping a relatively new film with Chris Evans is enough to set off the alarms to begin with. The Red Sea Diving Resort is far from Evans’ finest hour, but he is a reliable, welcome presence. As our lead, Ari is only worth standing behind in the few moments when Evans is allowed to be his charismatic self but otherwise, he’s a dull cipher who endlessly repeats stock hero lines like “we leave no one behind.” 

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As his laughably incongruous, uber-attractive colleagues, Haley Bennett, Alessandro Nivola, and Michiel Huisman are absolutely fine. They allow their natural charms to do most of the heavy-lifting and the same applies to their superiors, unexpectedly played by Greg Kinnear and Ben Kingsley. None of them put in a dud performance here, but the script is so devoid of charm that it’s no surprise the stars have little enthusiasm for the material.

As the Ethiopian Jews are depicted as an anonymous mass, only afforded individual lines when one of them is dying or complaining, Raff has created a composite spokesperson in Michael K. Williams’ Kebede Bimro, perplexingly billed as Evans’ co-star.

Williams, so excellent in The Wire and his freshly Emmy-nominated turn in When They See Us , is typically game here but he struggles in a film that simply doesn’t care about him. As the apparent voice of the voiceless, Bimro is somehow often non-existent, disappearing for large portions of the film and then only briefly reappearing to remind us he’s still technically a character. He functions as a reminder of the film’s failing of its subject matter. 

In terms of actual thrills, The Red Sea Diving Resort is also unexpectedly tame. There’s little tension developed but also a lack of interest in actually developing suspense, lurching unsteadily between dialogue-heavy scenes and sudden bursts of violence.

With that said, the cinematography is particularly eye-catching, and Raff’s direction is clean, doing a remarkable job at enlivening scenery that is, for the most part, monotonous. It’s a thriller that might work for some people and the premise is abounding in potential, but ultimately,  The Red Sea Diving Resor t just isn’t worth the visit.

The Red Sea Diving Resort is available now on Netflix.

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Patrick Sproull

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• The True Story Behind Netflix’s <i>The Red Sea Diving Resort</i>

The True Story Behind Netflix’s The Red Sea Diving Resort

A rous Holiday Village seemed like an idyllic vacation destination. In the early 1980s, hundreds of tourists flocked to its sandy white beaches and explored its underwater worlds with beautiful coral reefs. And while its location on the coast of Sudan may not have been an obvious choice for sun-seekers, given the country’s history of conflict and drought , brochures distributed across European travel agencies emphasized the regular flight routes from London, Paris and Rome to Khartoum, as well as the warm temperatures and pleasant sea breezes. But there was much more than met the eye at the popular beach resort, and that story is the inspiration for new Netflix film The Red Sea Diving Resort.

Starring Chris Evans, Michael K. Williams and Haley Bennett, The Red Sea Diving Resort is based on true events, namely the Operation Brothers mission which ran from 1979 to 1984 and saved the lives of thousands of Ethiopian Jews. In reality, and as depicted in the film, an abandoned hotel did serve as the perfect cover for a risky operation smuggling Ethiopian Jewish refugees through the hotel on the East African coast, sending them onwards by boat to safety and new lives in Israel. Official information related to the mission was declassified only in recent years.

Some critics have called out The Red Sea Diving Resort for putting forth a “ white-savior ” narrative, privileging the roles of the Israeli Mossad agents led by Evans’ character Ari Levinson. Director Gideon Raff said in a statement that the Ethiopian community “were true partners in this operation and they are the real heroes of this story,” noting that it was important to him to cast actors from the Ethiopian community in the film. The movie’s release also comes at a tense moment in Israel, where large-scale protests flared up in early July after the shooting of 18-year-old Solomon Tekah, marking the 11th Ethiopian Israeli killed by police in the past 20 years. Tekah’s death sharpened focus on the grievances of Israel’s 150,000-strong Ethiopian community , members of which have voiced their frustrations against racism and discrimination in the country since the first major waves of immigration that started with these operations in 1980s.

Here’s a closer look back at the history behind the true events that inspired The Red Sea Diving Resort :

Why were Ethiopian Jews fleeing their home country?

The history of Ethiopian Jews is a long and complex one, with many academics unsure of exactly when and how a Jewish population came to be in Ethiopia. While some of their customs are distinct from Hebrew traditions, the community, historically known as Beta Israel, has become a largely accepted part of mainstream Judaism. “It’s a bit shrouded in mystery, but there are reports that a huge community lived in Ethiopia for ages, more than 1,500 years. Some people even speak about millennia,” says Jon Abbink, a professor of governance and politics in Africa, specializing in Ethiopia, at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a combination of push factors in Ethiopia led to a big exodus of refugees from the Beta Israel community, as depicted in The Red Sea Diving Resort . The Ethiopian revolution in 1974 heightened underlying political tensions in the country, with opponents of the military regime led by Mengistu Haile Mariam facing the threat of arrest or execution. There were also environmental and economic factors, with droughts in 1973 and 1974 , and again in the early 1980s , leading to widespread famine and one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 20th century.

Amid the country’s descent into civil war beginning 1974, Ethiopian Jews became more prominent as political revolutionaries , active in rebel struggles against the military regime. Infighting between the differing rebel groups, combined with the instability in the country, led to more and more Beta Israel refugees fleeing Ethiopia via Sudan at the beginning of 1978, according to Abbink. “We saw this conjuncture of political and ecological and economic issues which urged the Beta Israel to leave the country, led by community activists,” he says. As depicted in the beginning of the film, the journey across the deserts of the Horn of Africa to reach refugee camps in Sudan was often dangerous, but a risk judged worth taking by Ethiopian Jews who feared for their lives. One estimate suggests that around 4,000 of the 20,000 Beta Israel people who made the journey from northern Ethiopia to Sudan died en route.

Why were Israeli agents involved in refugee rescue operations?

In The Red Sea Diving Resort , Evans’ character Ari Levinson hatches a bold plan: to renovate an abandoned Italian hotel on the coast of Sudan, eight hours’ drive from the capital of Khartoum, and use it as a cover to smuggle Ethiopian Jews from refugee camps to Israel via boat. Israeli officers initially react with skepticism at the proposal, but decide to entrust Levinson with planning the operation and recruiting fellow Mossad agents from around the world to help him.

While this scene appears to have added a touch of dramatic flair, Mossad agents certainly were instrumental in scouting out possible locations that could act as a cover to transport the refugees to safety, as well as eventually running the real-life resort. But the origins of Operation Brothers were also due in large part to the efforts of activists from the Ethiopian Jewish community. “Initially Israeli authorities were contacted by Ethiopian Beta Israel activists asking if they could help. There definitely was a demand,” says Abbink. One of these activists was Farede Yazazao Aklum , who was the inspiration for Williams’ character. After fleeing his home in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, and walking the grueling 300 miles to Khartoum, Sudan, Aklum wrote a letter that triggered Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to task Mossad agents with the rescue of the Beta Israel.

Earlier in the 1970s, smaller numbers of Ethiopian Jews were transported to safety by plane from Khartoum and welcomed in Israel. Larger Mossad-led operations including Operation Brothers, and the later Operation Moses (1984-1985) and Operation Solomon (1991), were responsible for the arrival of an estimated 90,000 members of the community in Israel by the end of the 1990s. “In the case of the Beta Israel, this was the only example where another country was willing and able to help the people, and adopt the people,” says Abbink. “Many other refugees remained, and still are in Sudan, because no country is really ready to take them in. But the Israeli government made a commitment to take their people in.”

Did an escape mission really happen at a hotel in Sudan?

In 1981, Mossad agents scouted the Sudanese coastline and found 15 beachside villas that had been abandoned a decade earlier. Nestled on the shorelines of the Red Sea and boasting picturesque coral reefs, the resort provided a front for agents to covertly transport Beta Israel refugees to boats that would carry them to Israel. As depicted in the film, the Sudanese International Tourist Corporation did actually believe it was renting the resort out to hotel managers and diving enthusiasts — all of whom were in fact undercover Israeli operatives. Real, unsuspecting tourists, mainly from Europe, came to stay at the resort, attracted by brochures that touted “breathtaking views of the heavens, aflame with millions of stars” and “an abundance of exotic fish” in “exceptionally clear waters.”

“This operation was so fulfilling, because you were saving hundreds of people from a very bad fate,” said Yola Reitman in a video interview for a behind-the-scenes look at the film. Reitman was an Israeli agent responsible for managing the hotel, a role reflected by Haley Bennett’s character in the film. At the time, Abbink was studying the Beta Israel community in Israel, and knew of the operation that was happening at the Arous Holiday Village. “Of course, I kept my mouth shut so as not to endanger anything. It was an extremely delicate mission,” he recalls.

Was the mission successful?

As depicted in the film, the mission spanned years and resulted in the relocation of thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Jerusalem, while agents kept up appearances maintaining and managing the hotel. According to Abbink, around 8,000 Beta Israel individuals escaped to Israel via Sudan with the help of the Israeli resort staff, which made it the largest-scale operation of its time.

As a boy, Daniel Sahalo and his family fled from Ethiopia via Sudan to Israel as part of Operation Moses, which airlifted over 7,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1984-1985. “There was just a rumor that we needed to get to Sudan and from there we might be able to get help,” he said in a video interview . Sahalo worked as an historical consultant on The Red Sea Diving Resort , saying that the film was important to tell to future generations because “these people risked their lives every day for almost three years.”

“What I hope the audience will think about when they see the film is that there are about 65 million refugees in the world today,” said Raff in a statement. “We seem to be closing the doors in their faces and many of them are losing their lives on their way to a better future. Compassion would be the biggest thing that I hope people will take away.”

Correction, August 1

The original version of this story misstated The Red Sea Diving Resort’s connection to Mossad Exodus: The Daring Undercover Rescue of the Lost Jewish Tribe , by Gad Shimron . The film is not associated with the book.

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Review: ‘The Red Sea Diving Resort’

The Red Sea Diving Resort has been dubbed ‘the true story you need to see to believe’, and thanks to Israeli filmmaker Gideon Raff ( Homeland ), now we can. The long-awaited film has finally hit the Netflix airwaves since its fate was unknown after filming back in 2017. This review will have mild spoilers but nothing plot revealing.

The operation of the Red Sea Diving Resort (known as Operation Brothers) took place in the 1980s as an undercover mission to liberate thousands of Jewish Ethiopian refugees from the brutal gangs of Sudan. The Israeli government leased out an abandoned Italian diving resort in Sudan on the Red Sea, utilizing it as a tourist getaway (quite successfully) while smuggling out thousands of Ethiopians in the dead of night.

The story itself is remarkable — a rare “it’s so crazy it just might work” idea — but I felt the film glossed over the mission itself. Whether that be from time restraint or fear of the film being too dark for general audiences, there were a lot of filler scenes that really didn’t add much to the film or what these Mossad agents were trying to accomplish. There’s some good banter, a few funny scenes and a couple of classic self-sacrificial cliches embedded into the heavier material, again, I believe to lighten the plot and for that it does succeed. It seemed as if they wanted to keep Chris Evans in his Captain America role, the selfless, virtue-upholding leader, making Ari Levinson seem a little too good to be true at times. Despite that, Evans plays the part well, giving his all as he typically does in all of his projects. Of course, there are heroic rescues and insight into the savagery the Ethiopians had to endure, but all in all I felt the story never gained its footing. Instead, it awkwardly transitioned from one event to the next, the tone of the film switching a few times. However, the story does get told to completion, and the real-life footage in the credits really makes it all hit home and you can see how well replicated some of that imagery was in the film itself.

The highlight for me was the dynamic between Chris Evans and Alessandro Nivola. Evans plays the mission’s lead agent, Ari, while Nivola supports as his begrudged field doctor partner through every step of the way, Sammy Navon. The way they play out their conflicts (mostly originating from Navon), whether that be with each other or the work at hand, was a great give and take. I wish we’d gotten to see both a little more of the complexity of their relationship and these two great performers. I enjoyed all five of the main Mossad team, but special kudos to Haley Bennett as Rachel Reiter. Being the only female on the team, she was well-written and strong, Bennett playing her to perfection.

We’re all just refugees, aren’t we? -Rachel Reiter

The message of the film is clear, even if it may have been lacking in action-packed sequences and heart-wrenching scenes. This is a story about humanity and compassion in a world that’s beginning to lose touch with those virtues. At the core of it, these men and women saw suffering and went to great lengths and through great risk to help their fellow brothers and sisters. And that’s a feat I think we can all take something away from.

The Red Sea Diving Resort is available now on Netflix .

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'Red Sea Diving Resort' Review: Chris Evans Still Playing the Hero Post-MCU

Alessandro Nivola and Chris Chalk are the standouts in Gideon Raff's drama, which hits Netflix on July 31.

It's hard for me to believe, since part of me still thinks of him as the local kid I heard about growing up who got cast in Not Another Teen Movie , but Chris Evans is the star of the biggest movie of all time. Not Leonardo DiCaprio . Not Sam Worthington . No, it was Evans' Captain America who recently led Avengers: Endgame to the ultimate box office crown. With the MCU now firmly in Evans' rear-view mirror, it's going to be interesting to see what the future holds for him. I still don't think Evans is quite on the level of some of his peers, but he is  steadily improving as a dramatic actor, and though it's been five years since he really challenged himself outside of the MCU, the new Netflix movie The Red Sea Diving Resort offers Evans his meatiest opportunity yet.

The film is based on the incredible true story of a group of international agents who used a deserted hotel in Sudan as a front to smuggle thousands of Jewish refugees out of Ethiopia in the early '80s. It was written, directed and produced by Gideon Raff , whose name I recognize from the credits of one of my favorite TV shows, Homeland -- itself an international espionage thriller. The title might be a little clunky, but no one thought Argo was a great title either, and look how that movie turned out. It won Best Picture. The Red Sea Diving Resort won't win any Oscars (not that it's eligible anyway), but the story works on its own terms, and the seaside setting is inherently cinematic.

Evans plays Mossad agent Ari Levinson, first seen doing push-ups in the back of a pickup truck. I wish I was kidding about this, but I'm not. Ari works for the Israeli government, and he and his longtime pal Sammy Navon (Alessandro Nivola) have been helping a courageous community leader named Kabede Bimro (Michael K. Williams) smuggle thousands of brave Ethiopian Jews out of the country and into Jerusalem, where they will be free from religious persecution. Together, they strive to "leave no one behind."

Sammy is a trauma doctor whose confidence has been shaken after suffering an injury to his hand, and it's his adrenaline-fueled friendship with the more impulsive Ari that serves as the primary relationship in the film. Their friendship is built on a mutual pursuit of danger, and because of that, there's a tension between them that always simmers beneath the surface. The two of them are eventually joined on their noble mission by Haley Bennett  ( The Girl on the Train ), Michiel Huisman  ( Game of Thrones ) and Alex Hassell , who can currently be seen -- or not -- as the often-nude Translucent on Amazon's The Boys .

This quintet of international agents devise a plan to take over the strategically located Red Sea Diving Resort in Sudan and use the dilapidated hotel to temporarily house refugees as they await transportation to Jerusalem. When a bus full of German tourists mistake the resort for an actual, functional hotel, they unknowingly wind up providing the perfect cover for Ari and his team, who must now cater to guests during the day while carrying out their dangerous missions at night. But as thousands of refugees disappear from local camps, the Sudanese military begins to catch on, and they find the new, white hoteliers awfully suspicious.

I'll be honest, for the first 30 minutes or so, I was skeptical about RSDR 's prospects, but it turns out that the film just needs some time to settle in, because by the end, it did win me over. Why? Because this is simply a good story. I don't see how anyone can really deny that, and a good story goes a long way in my book. But every good story -- well, most -- needs a good villain, and the real reason that this film's second half plays much better than its first comes down to the arrival of  Chris Chalk . Best known for playing Lucius Fox on Gotham , Chalk provides the villain that this film sorely needs. As Sudanese military leader Col. Abdel Ahmed, he gives us someone to root against, and that's an essential ingredient when you're trying to satisfy an audience. With a lit cigar smoldering beneath his dead-eye stare, Chalk reminded me of a cross between Daniel Kaluuya in Widows and Idris Elba in Beasts of No Nation . Raff conjures some strong moments of genuine suspense while Col. Ahmed and his men search the resort for the hidden refugees, and Chalk's scenes were the highlight for me.

Lending the proceedings further weight and gravitas are Oscar winners  Ben Kingsley  and Greg Kinnear . The former plays an Israeli government official who's skeptical of Ari's plan, but doesn't have a better one, while the latter plays a CIA bureaucrat torn between nabbing Ari and his team, and helping them. Kinnear gets the film's best line involving the Hebrew word "shalom," but Nivola probably has the best material to play with overall, and along with Chalk, he's the clear standout here, as he makes Sammy feel like a real person with self-doubts and resentments. Huisman and Hassell are given little to work with, and I can't say there's much to Bennett's character, either, as she's more or less relegated to concierge while the men go off on missions -- not that she doesn't get to engage in some hand-to-hand combat of her own.

But if there's one character who comes up short here, through no fault of the actor, it's Kabede Bimro, the leader of the Ethiopian Jews who puts his own life on the line to ensure that no one is left behind. Michael K. Williams has made a career out of playing bad guys, so it's nice to see him switch things up here. However, Kabede is supposed to be the heart and soul of this movie, and unfortunately, the character feels too underwritten to allow for much emotional impact. I would've given this movie a B+ if it had tugged at my heartstrings just a little bit more, but Red Sea Diving Resort just isn't that kind of movie.

In the end, the success of this film rests on Evans' shoulders, and while he's more than serviceable here, and his hair looks great, I don't think it's crazy to suggest that he has a certain ceiling as a dramatic actor, at least as far as I've seen. I thought he was great in the MCU, and I think he excels with comedy (see Scott Pilgrim and the Knives Out trailer), but he just doesn't have the dramatic weight this kind of film requires to truly soar. So while I'll recommend Red Sea Diving Resort , I will warn you that it's long (apprx. 129 minutes), it gets off to a rocky start, and Evans still has room for improvement when he's not holding Cap's trademark shield.

I invoked Argo above because it's clear that  The Red Sea Diving Resort desperately wants to be Argo , right down to its funky '70s setting and race-to-an-airplane ending. It may not be as good as Ben Affleck 's Best Picture winner, but that's a high bar, and as far as Netflix movies go, this one has to count among the streamer's better releases. In fact, it's more satisfying than Netflix's own Affleck movie  Triple Frontier , and I'm willing to bet it cost a lot less, too. Without the MCU to fall back on, Evans will be forced to redefine himself as a leading man, and this streaming effort is worth diving into to see his progression as an actor, as it proves he doesn't need superpowers to play a hero... you just have to surround him with the right team.

Review: The Red Sea Diving Resort

The lazy, predictable, and uninspired espionage thriller The Red Sea Diving Resort gets off to a start so horrifically flat and laughably laboured that most savvy moviegoers (meaning anyone who knows how a story should be told, framed, or executed) would probably shut it off within the first ten minutes. While writer-director Gideon Raff – who’s taking some obvious and significant liberties with the real life crisis and genocide his movie is based on – never redeems the unbearable clunkiness and unearned tension of the film’s start, it does help to lower expectations accordingly for anyone willing to stick around. The Red Sea Diving Resort never becomes a good movie or even that focused or engaging of one, but it does its best to shamelessly rip off a much better directed and written motion picture. Raff has certainly studied what elements go into making a good movie, even if he seems to have little clue how to make one.

The Red Sea Diving Resort spans the late 1970s and early 80s and surrounds an Israeli backed campaign to save thousands of Ethiopian Jews from their country’s violent Civil War. It’s a nearly impossible and time consuming mission that requires Mossad members to secretly and stealthily sneak the refugees out of their home country and through Sudan, which was implementing stricter Sharia laws that didn’t look kindly upon refugees, women, or Jews. The man tasked with leading the often frustrating and slow moving operation is Ari Levinson, played by Chris Evans in his first notable post-Marvel role. Levinson has been twice fired by his boss (Ben Kingsley), and he’s about to be pulled off his assignment for the final time by governmental higher-ups. Having seen first hand the desperation faced by the Ethiopian Jews, Levinson comes up with a last ditch plan to get the refugees out of there. His idea: lease a decaying, unused resort property along the Red Sea coastline from the Sudanese government as a cover operation to explain why a bunch of foreign outsiders need to stay in the country for so long; using the time they’ve bought to continue bringing small batches of refugees out of the country across various spaced out missions. If Ari and his team can get the refugees through the Muslim stronghold to the coastline, it’s only a three day trip by boat to Sinai and safety. Almost immediately, however, their plans are nearly thwarted by the arrival of foreign tourists, who were sent to the fake resort by government officials who took the operation at face value. If they don’t keep up appearances, the team and the people they’re trying to save could be in grave danger.

The Red Sea Diving Resort wants to be Argo 2.0, right down to the positively Affleck-ian appearance and cadence of Evans’ clearly-not-Israeli main character. A bunch of spies and helpers do their best to pretend they’re something they aren’t in a bid to exfiltrate people in mortal danger. Raff isn’t close to being as skilled of a director or writer, but he’s clearly a fan of how the Iran hostage crisis was resolved in Affleck’s Oscar winner right down to the “will the plane be able to take off from the tarmac?” climax. The beats are virtually the same across the board, but The Red Sea Diving Resort forgets pretty much everything that made Argo such a riveting and entertaining thriller. Raff’s film flat out refuses to be interesting on its own terms.

The film opens with Ari’s Ethiopian pointman, Kabede Bimro (Michael Kenneth Williams), narrating footage of an exfiltration that nearly goes awry. Over chaotic images that builds to a young child nearly getting shot point blank in the head, Kabede talks endlessly about the suffering faced by Ethiopian Jews and the 2,000 year struggle of his people to return to their homeland. There’s plenty of derring-do to be performed and a fair number of close calls, but none of them are exciting because the viewer knows nothing about these people outside of their pain. Raff’s idea of how to tell a story like this is to suggest that bad situations need no explanation, and while genocide is certainly a just cause to save as many lives as possible, the writer-director never adequately gives a voice to the very people the heroes are trying to save. Williams does what he can to explain things with a certain degree of gravitas, but really, the Ethiopians are nothing more than cannon fodder to Raff; just another commodity that needs to be saved and preserved by the might of the Mossad. We know nothing about the conditions these people are living under, all of the countless near misses they face whenever Ari isn’t around, or the volatile political and social situations in Ethiopia or Sudan. We just know that some really bad people want to kill the good ones, and without that added layer of depth, The Red Sea Diving Resort languishes in baseline mediocrity when it could’ve been poignant and heart-wrenching.

Hearing The Red Sea Diving Resort from the perspective of Kabede and those he swore to protect would be vastly preferable to the Argo -light antics Raff has in store, and there would assuredly be more suspense and uncertainty. Scenes where Ari tries to sell his plan to the top brass lead into a montage where the spy puts together his hand-picked team of operatives. There’s a scene where Ari barks at his team members about the importance of keeping their cover identities straight. The first attempted exfiltration from the resort doesn’t go according to plan, raising suspicion from the local warlords. They settle into a groove and try to balance the day-to-day running of a fake tourist trap with their mission, via another montage, this one set to “Hungry Like the Wolf.” There’s an American CIA attaché (Greg Kinnear) who wants the Israelis gone almost as much as he wants the Islamic regime to fall. If it ever happened in a plot where spies have to keep up an act for the sake of the mission, you’ll find it in The Red Sea Diving Resort with no deviation, intentiveness, or ingenuity. It’s all face-value heroism that should feel more vital and captivating instead of bland and perfunctory.

Other than dreadfully underutilized Williams, the only major bright spots to be found here come from some of the character actors pegged to play members of Ari’s team. Haley Bennett has the only openly fun role as a tough, physically impressive woman who was previously moonlighting as an airline stewardess. Michiel Huisman provides some light comedic relief as the resort’s “diving expert.” Alessandro Nivola steals the entire show out from underneath Evans as the team’s doctor and resident skeptic. Not only does Nivola get the only character who feels fully realized and detailed, but he’s also the only person capable of pointing out to Ari that the entire plan is ludicrous and unsustainable. It’s a great performance, but Nivola’s character also gets to voice what a lot of viewers will undoubtedly be thinking as The Red Sea Diving Resort grows increasingly predictable.

And there’s no skirting around the issue that Evans is 1,010% wrong for the role of Ari. Evans, who sounds here like he couldn’t be from anywhere in the world other than Massachusetts and looks like he’s competing in a Tony Mendez look-alike contest, is playing the exact same kind of vaguely smarmy and smart-assed role that he was playing before he donned the Captain America tights, mask, and shield. There have always been flashes that Evans can be a capable and intriguing leading man ( Snowpiercer , Puncture ), but The Red Sea Diving Resort finds the actor leaning hard into bad, old habits. He’s a pretty, smug, and bland hero, made worse by the fact that Raff’s script paints Ari in a rather incompetent light. Some of the acts attempted by Ari and his team are MacGruber levels of ludicrous, and Evans can’t do anything more than shrug off the character’s shortcomings with a smile and a quip. I began to wonder through Evans’ performance if some of The Red Sea Diving Resort was meant to be funny on purpose or if the actor saw something in the material that no one else saw. It’s a strange choice of leading man for such a story, and he seems to have been hired not because he can credibly act like a Mossad agent, but rather because if you squint hard enough, he kinda looks like a different actor from the state of Massachusetts who starred in something similar. 

(It should also be noted that Evans isn’t even attempting to come up with an accent for his character, which becomes even more hilarious when the cover stories he gives to his co-workers requires all of them to put on silly sounding accents. Bennett has to sound like a German, and Nivola has to sound Australian, but Evans still gets to sound like himself. None of the other actors were doing accents, either, when the audience first sees them, but there’s something hilarious about watching a leading actor who isn’t doing an accent in the first place is barking orders at everyone to try harder. Ultimately, none of this matters, as these fake accents are barely ever heard again outside of the scene where the cover stories are fleshed out, meaning that entire sequence, this paragraph, and the majority of The Red Sea Diving Resort is a complete waste of time.)

The bizarre choices don’t end with Evans’ casting in the lead and the script’s shocking ability to make a reality based life and death situation as thrilling as a sleeping pill with a chamomile chaser. The Red Sea Diving Resort looks like it was blocked and framed by graduates of the “Tom Hooper School of Needless Negative Space,” the kind of film that would rather spend half of all its frames looking at walls, patches of grass, or antique chairs rather than making sure all of the the characters in a scene or anything visually interesting can be seen. The editing is amateurish at best, and sometimes silly at worst (dig those crazy ventian-blind style wipes!). The score from Mychael Danna – the absolute worst of his career – can’t decide if it wants to rip off the Tangerine Dream score from Sorcerer or go for something folksier. Even the font used to establish various times and places looks more at home in a sci-fi thriller about killer aliens and/or robots than it does in a serious ripped-from-the-headlines spy thriller.

And despite how cathartic it can be to take a self-serious and unsuccessful potboiler down a peg or two, ragging on The Red Sea Diving Resort brings me no joy. The film ends (before the requisite showing of archival footage of how things really went down over the credits) with an honest, earnest, and obvious plea to viewers to help their fellow humans during the largest worldwide refugee crises in history. I can get behind that, and it’s important to remember in our apathetic times (although I’m sure Palestinian viewers will have a lot to say about a film glamorizing the Mossad ending in such a fashion). It would be a more potent message if the film built around it was considerably better than this.

The Red Sea Diving Resort is available to stream on Netflix starting on Wednesday, July 31, 2019.

Check out the trailer for The Red Sea Diving Resort :

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Andrew Parker

Andrew Parker fell in love with film growing up across the street from a movie theatre. He began writing professionally about film at the age of fourteen, and has been following his passions ever since. His writing has been showcased at various online outlets, as well as in The Globe and Mail, BeatRoute, and NOW Magazine. If he's not watching something or reading something, he's probably sleeping.

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