Dark of the Sun (1968)

Hey there, Internet People! It's time for another movie review, and today I'll be reviewing my recently received copy of the 1968 man-on-a-mission film, Dark of the Sun.

It has a reputation for being extremely violent and Tarantino even used some of the films score in Inglorious Basterds, so we must be in for a treat, right? In any case, I can check another fi7lm off of my "Watch All the Films Referenced in a Tarantino Movie" list. (Okay, I don't actually have a list of all the films referenced by Tarantino movies.)

Set during the Congo Crisis that was unfolding while the film was in production, it follows a band of mercenaries hired by the President of the Congo ostensibly to rescue a town full of Europeans civilians from the advancing rebel Simbas, but in reality their mission is to retrieve fifty million dollars worth of diamonds from a mining company vault before the rebels can seize them (Blood Diamonds anyone? Looks like I'm gonna have read those Wikipedia articles, too...)

Despite the ripped-from-the-headlines-plot, it feels very much like the other war movies of the era. The mercenaries include Bruce Curry (played by Rod Taylor), as the leader, Rufo (football player and 70s and 80s action movie regular Jim Brown), the friend, Doctor Wreid (British actor Kenneth Moore), as the alcoholic or perhaps as the british guy, and Ex-Nazi Heinlein (Peter Carsten) as the expert and to provide the obligitory tension in the group. He's even wearing a swastika pinned to his uniform in his first scene. None of the rest of team trusts him, but he does bring a company of trained soldiers with him, so they tolerate him for the time being. Of course, by the rules of the genre, we all know that by the end of the movie they'll have this all worked out and probably sacrifice himself for one of them... or he will have betrayed them to the Simbas in a ploy to get the diamonds for himself.

Things soon go wrong when their train is strafed by a UN plane despite having UN clearance. Exploding train cars and machine gun fire ensues, it looks like this movie's going to have non-stop action from the first reel. When they're not fighting the movie goes full soap opera. Curry argues with Dr Wreid over his drinking the moment the bullets stop flying and the fires are all put out, they he takes one of the congolese soldiers to task for choking up when the UN plane was strafing them.

The film also has lots of gorgeous scenery. It was filmed in Jamaica along the Jamaican railway system and there is plenty of shots of the forests.

Yes, this movie really does have a CHAINSAW FIGHT.

In one early scene Heinlein machine guns to Congolese children believing them to be spies while the rest of the hardened mercenaries watch shocked. In the next scene Curry asked Rufo "why don't you hate whites?" They don't make movies like this anymore.

Then Heinlein goes after Curry with a chainsaw in an effort to resolve their differences. And then Curry tries to crush Heinlein's skull under the wheels of their train. Forget all about what I wrote earlier about this movie feeling like any other 60s war movie. They didn't have chainsaw duels in The Dirty Dozen. This movie is amazing.

Once the train arrives in the town, the mercenaries get to have even more character development. After Dr Wreid and Heinlein get drunk and shoot up an (empty) bar, Curry hauls Wreid off to the local church where he is needed to help deliver a baby despite the fact that Dr Wreid is a, drunk and b, apparently only qualified to remove patch up bullet wounds. Dr. Wreid then decides to stay behind so he can be murdered by the Simbas once they arrive.

All hell breaks loose when they Simbas arrive right before the time lock on the diamond vault door opens. Fortunately, it seems the simbas are armed with wooden spears while the mercenaries have machine guns. Unfortunately things turn into a running firefight with the rebels firing on the fleeing train with mortars (yeah, they have mortars now.) Then their train gets blown up an they have to flee on foot. The mercenaries, the evacuating civilians, and the diamonds, surrounded by an army of leftist guerrillas who want to torture them all to death. And to make things even worse in all this the diamonds get left in the hotel in town. The same town that the Simbas just seized.

Curry and Rufo have a plan for retrieving the diamonds that is pure awesome. Rufo walks into town with Curry stripped to the waist and slung over one shoulder. They just wander into the hotel past the crowd of guerillas caught up in a frenzy of looting, pillaging, raping, and killing. (Did I mention that this movie totally deserves it's reputation? 'Cause it does.) Once inside they snatch the diamonds off the table and then kill everybody with machine guns and blow up everything that hasn't burned down yet.

Rufo and Curry follow up their moment of badass by spending the next scene arguing over Curry fighting because he's a mercenary versus Rufo fighting for his country.  Then Heinlein shows up and murders Rufo while Curry is away from the group. It looks like they've elected not to have them settle their difference with Heinlein and instead they went with the other option. That's probably not surprising after the Chainsaw Incident.

Then Curry gets back from wherever he was and finds the rest of the cast holding a funeral for Rufo. At this point he seems to forget all about the diamonds and heard of refugees he's leading. Yeah, this movie is awesome. And brutal.

This is messed up in so many ways, but it comes with a very surprising moral at the end of the movie. One that the whole rest of the movie was just one big setup for. I would recommend this movie to anyone who wanted to see something in the vein of Blood Diamond.

Trailer

Imdb
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