Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jean-Luc Herbulot
Starring: Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Bruno Henry, Marielle
Salmier, Mentor Ba
Combining action with horror is a difficult balancing act, as they're
two genres that rely on entirely different filmmaking skills. Action
requires bombast, horror subtlety. Few filmmakers have managed to pull
off the combo, and those who have are mostly to have been named James
Cameron and John McTiernan. Congolese filmmaker
Jean-Luc Herbulot doesn't quite pull it off with
Saloum, but he certainly swings for the fences.
Set in 2003, the movie opens in the bloody, corpse-strewn aftermath of
a massacre in Guinea-Bissau. Making their way stealthily through the
carnage are three mercenaries – Chaka (Yann Gael), Rafa (Roger Sallah) and Minuit (Mentor Ba) – collectively known as Bangui's
Hyenas. Hiding in a nearby building they find Felix (Renaud Farah), the Mexican drug smuggler they've been hired to extract, along with
his bag of gold bars.
Fleeing by air to the Senegalese capital Dakar, the Hyenas are forced
to ground their plane in the remote region of the country that gives the
film its name. Having grown up in the area, Chaka is familiar with the
land and leads the others to a resort governed by the accommodating Omar
(Bruno Henry). Run like a commune with guests paying for their
stay by performing tasks rather than contributing financially, the
hippy-dippy ethos of the resort clashes with the Hyenas' "every man for
themselves" philosophy. But it's a place to lie low until they can
repair their plane.
Something about this set-up felt nigglingly familiar, and then it
clicked. Herbulot has taken Michael Curtiz's classic comedy
We're No Angels - in which a trio of hardened criminals
hole up in a store run by a kindly shopkeeper who gives all his goods
away on credit – and given it a gritty, spaghetti western influenced
spin. Just like the anti-heroes of Curtiz's film, the tough Hyenas begin
to soften as they see the good Omar is doing for the local community by
supplying food and fighting off European poachers. But their true
identity is threatened by Awa (Evelyn Ily Juhen), a deaf woman
who twigs them upon arrival, having grown up hearing stories of the
trio's legendary exploits. There's also a vacationing police captain
from Dakar, while Omar may not be all he seems.
It's this middle section of the film that works best, as Herbulot
ratchets up the tension and makes us empathise with men who seemed like
little more than one-dimensional bandits on first appearance. It's when
the supernatural element is introduced in the final act that the movie
begins to crumble. Herbulot introduces creatures that get inside the
ears of their victims and consume them from the inside out. It's a nice
concept, but the creatures are represented as swirling clouds of flies,
and I couldn't get the image of Pig-Pen from Peanuts out of my head. The
supernatural threat that Herbulot introduces simply isn't as engaging as
the various human threats already in place by that point.
Herbulot certainly displays talent as a director, keeping things moving
at whip-crack pace without ever resorting to the sort of
incomprehensible rapid fire editing favoured by so many western action
filmmakers. He also does some great work with his actors, telling us so
much about his trio of mercenaries not through dialogue but how they
look at each other – these are men who have worked so closely for so
long they have an almost psychic bond. Team Herbulot up with a writer
who can better communicate his themes and ideas and we might see
something very special from this filmmaker.