 Dir. Uwe Boll, Canada/South Africa/Germany, 98 mins We're on to the second week of Octo-Boll, and having started with the wonderful ridiculousness that was Postal, it's time to move on to something very different. Boll's filmography certainly does take some unexpected turns, covering a whole host of genres, and what we have in Attack on Darfur is a surprising combination of political drama and exploitation flick. Before we get into it further, I feel like we should just address the elephant in the room – yes, Darfur is a hideous human atrocity, and this movie is apparently inspired by that. For today I'm simply looking at the film on its own merits – I can't speak for its accuracy in depicting the real situation in Darfur, nor have I extensively researched the facts behind it before writing this review. There's plenty of people much better informed and qualified to look into that than me, and you'll no doubt find a plethora of information out there if you're interested in it or if this review makes you want to find out more. Film Gutter is a review column and that's what I'm going to stick to. Right, sorry, let's move on... The overriding impression of Attack on Darfur is that it's a little confused as to what it is. We begin following a crew of journalists in the region looking to find out more about the terrible attacks that have been taking place in the area – they discover a mass grave before they come to a small village and interview some of the residents about what they have been through. Likely that sounds fine to you, and a reasonable enough way to set some context. However this runs for about 45 minutes, and while there are undoubtedly interesting moments – and I believe this features some real people recounting their experiences rather than actors – it does feel a little long to establish the scene and the background. That is until our attackers arrive at the village, and a tense situation develops, with the journalists' lives coming under threat before a diplomat encourages them to leave, simply giving the 'Janjaweed' aggressors free rein with a group of unarmed Sudanese villagers. The next ten minutes I would genuinely have to rank among the most upsetting I've seen, as the village is all but wiped up with guns and machetes, huts are set on fire with people inside them, women are raped and racial slurs are uttered, the whole thing shot in a very chaotic manner on a handicam. Our concluding section of the movie sees some of our journalists return to the village with guns in an effort to save the village – distinctly too late, you would have to say – and we have an action-based finale which retains one or two emotional moments. It also keeps much of its absolutely brutal flavour until the very end. Make no mistakes, this movie takes a little while to get over. There's next to nothing by way of redemption, hope or optimism in the finale. Uwe Boll is a filmmaker that has always fascinated me, because he's always done things on his own terms, and the aim for this movie was obviously to shock you into reacting to this awful incident in recent history. In that respect, it is successful to a large extent. But I feel as though the surface brutality doesn't quite have the heart or meaning that it could have, and as such it doesn't have the emotional impact that it could. All day after watch this film I felt rattled, and my nerves were jangling, but I don't think I was as upset or angry as I could have been had this been grounded a bit more with its protagonists. It's hard to really know who the main characters are, or what the drive of the story is – it's not a tale of resistance or survival, being presented as a fly on the wall 'mockumentary' watching something horrible happen. In fact it's practically shot that way, with shaky cam neatly accompanied by shaky subtitles when they appear. There is a sense for me this could have really been something fantastic, but I feel as though the message – and let's not knock it for trying to raise some awareness of this sort of tragedy – rather overtakes the intent to make a film and the narrative suffers as a result. It's good, but is a bit too disjointed to be great. RATING: 6/10. There are a host of good things here – the cast is decent and the whole thing feels very real and very chaotic, and it's hard not to have some emotional response to some of the most in-your-face elements here. However the plot feels a little unfocused, and I don't think any of the characters are well-developed enough for it to really have the 'backend' to deliver the truly shocking effect it could have. This is a movie put together to make a point, and it unequivocally does that, but without being Boll's best movie. If you are going to check this one out, make sure to brace yourself though – it's one of the most unremittingly bleak movies I've watched so far, and it sure has some competition among these reviews... 
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