Title – The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019)

Director – Gideon Raff (Train)

Cast – Chris Evans, Alessandro Nivola, Greg Kinnear, Ben Kingsley, Michael Kenneth Williams, Hayley Bennett, Michiel Huisman

Plot – Based on the true story of a group of Mossad agents who undertook a dangerous mission that saw them overtake an abandoned resort in Sudan as a front to rescue a group of locals and transport them to Israel.

“You’re a lucky guy, but when the luck runs out, then you gotta have a plan and you never have one”

Review by Eddie on 09/08/2019

What is it with Netflix and squandering potential for products that are less than mediocre?

From Mute, Bright or Extinction through to The Legacy of the White Tail Deer Hunter, Netflix’s strike rate for turning their funded and distributed movies into something worthwhile is worryingly low with 1 hit barely making up for 9 or so misses and despite the ample potential for a thrilling feature length film, The Red Sea Diving Resort is another lifeless and tame offering from a streaming giant that should be genuinely concerned about the wastage of its film budget allotments.

Led by Chris Evans and supported by recognisable faces such as Michael Kenneth Williams, Alessandro Nivola, Greg Kinnear, Ben Kingsley and Haley Bennett, Resort feels like it has enough talent behind it to bring the true life tale of a group of Mossad agents who set up a front at a Sudanese retreat to help rescue 100’s of refugees from the violence and persecution of the land and transport them to Israel to live but it fails to inspire any type of emotion or thrills as director Gideon Raff takes us on a dull 2 hour plus journey.

Paramount to Resort’s failings is the fact every single character in the film from Evan’s lead agent Ari Levinson through to supports such as William’s Kabede Bimro or Kinnear’s government official Walton Bowen are so thinly drawn and unevolved that there’s never even the slightest chance that we can feel like we are getting to care or know these characters in any particularly meaningful way which hampers any chance the film had of making the stories more dangerous components or story developments interesting in the slightest.

In some ways its almost disrespectful just how cold and uninvolving the film is, as the incredible true story at the heart of this tale is one that deserves to be told, especially from the perspective of the men and women that put their lives on the line for the greater cause as the real life people behind these amazing feats of bravery and humanity end up becoming nothing more than thinly veiled creations bereft of any true substance, which is undoubtedly not the case in real life.

With Raff’s careless direction and stodgy set-pieces (working in conjunction with his trite script) weighing the film down even further there was never any chance that this Netflix clunker had a chance to better itself with not even the name brand cast able to add anything of note to the tale other than Evan’s trying his workmanlike best and showing off his still there Avengers body on more than a few screen hogging moments.

Final Say –

Even with an amazing true life tale at its core and potential to be a moving and thrilling event, The Red Sea Diving Resort is another Netflix misfire that’s so instantly forgettable you wonder what the very point of the whole outing was.

1 passport out of 5