Starring: Chris Evans, Michael K. Williams, Michiel Huisman, Haley Bennett, Alessandro Nivola, Greg Kinnear, Ben Kingsley, Alex Hassell, Mark Ivanir, Chris Chalk, Alona Tal
OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆
Story:
Bio-thriller drama written and directed by Gideon Raff. Inspired by true events, set in the early 80s, in which the story follows a group of Mossad agents and brave Ethiopians, led by Ari Kidron (Chris Evans) and Kabede Bimro (Michael K. Williams), who used a deserted holiday retreat in Sudan as a front to smuggle thousands of refugees to Israel.
Our Favorite Quote:
'When you see your brother or your sister suffering, you must not stay silent. Do not remain still. Go to their aid. Help them.' - Kabede Bimro (The Red Sea Diving Resort) Click To Tweet
Best Quotes (Total Quotes: 27)
[first lines; Ethiopia 1979]
Kabede Bimro: [voice over] My country is once again broken. Death is spreading. The new government is waging a war against the rebels. The rivers again have turned red with blood. Thousands dead. Millions disfigured, dishonored, displaced.
Kabede Bimro: [voice over] One ancient people suffers among the rest. The Jews of Ethiopia. We, like all Ethiopians, are in danger. But we alone are getting help. Help from men I have contacted.
[as they evacuate Jewish-Ethiopian refugees to Israel]
Kabede Bimro: You are crazy.
Ari Levinson: We leave no one behind.
Sammy Navon: I’m done.
Ari Levinson: Why?
Sammy Navon: I love you, man. You’re a lucky guy. But when the luck runs out, then you got to have a plan, and you never have one. So, I’m out.
Ari Levinson: You’re out?
Sammy Navon: I’m out.
[Sammy gets into the car]
Ari Levinson: Sammy.
Sammy Navon: Goodbye, my friend.
[the car drives off]
Ari Levinson: Sammy!
Ethan Levin: The Prime Minister is about to sign the most important peace accord in our lifetime, and he can’t enjoy it because of some remote tribe of our people getting massacred on a continent no one cares about.
Ari Levinson: Well, maybe you should let me do my job instead of pulling me out.
Ethan Levin: Your job includes getting arrested? Or is this just another by-product of you being reckless and totally out of control? Sudan. My god, Ari. An enemy country in a perpetual state of fuckedupness. What were you thinking?
Ari Levinson: I was thinking that hiding refugees in a refugee camp was a pretty brilliant idea.
Ethan Levin: And how do you propose to get them out of there?
Ari Levinson: Still working on that.
Ethan Levin: This job pays in migraines.
Ethan Levin: You look like shit.
Ari Levinson: Thank you. Smell like shit too. I was under for six weeks.
Ethan Levin: How’s Sarah?
Ari Levinson: She left me.
Ethan Levin: Your life’s a mess. Well, maybe this is a blessing in disguise then.
Ari Levinson: What is? Are you taking me off this?
Ethan Levin: Exfil is going to come up with some alternative plans for the Ethiopians. Then we’ll discuss with the boss how best to move forward.
Ari Levinson: Ethan, don’t do that. You know those guys are morons, they’re going to waste months on plans that aren’t viable. Months that we don’t have. You got to send me back.
Ethan Levin: Go home, take a shower, spend some time with the family.
Ari Levinson: Fuck! No.
Ethan Levin: No? It’s done, Ari. You’re not going anywhere.
[referring to Ari]
Barack Isaacs: Didn’t we fire him?
Ethan Levin: Twice.
Ari Levinson: The majority are coming in from Gondar and Tigray right there, but we can’t land our planes anywhere near there.
Barack Isaacs: Why?
Ari Levinson: The Derg brought in the Russians and Cubans. It’s limiting everyone’s mobility. The chance of landing a plane without being noticed is non-existent. The only way to get a substantial number out is by sea.
Barack Isaacs: Ethiopia’s practically landlocked.
Ari Levinson: But Sudan isn’t.
Barack Isaacs: How long does it take to get from Sudan to Sinai by boat?
Ethan Levin: It takes three days…
Barack Isaacs: Just a, hold on a sec. Even if this could work, you’d need a team of agents on the ground.
Ari Levinson: A team with international background.
Barack Isaacs: How are you going to keep our agents that long inside an enemy state?
Ethan Levin: This is where it gets really good.
Ari Levinson: Red Sea Diving Resort. It’s a hotel built by an Italian company in the early seventies. Fifty kilometers north of Port Sudan. The Italian company abandoned it five years ago. Now the Sudanese government is looking to lease it, to boost tourism.
Mossad General Weiss: Let me get this straight. You want Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, to purchase an abandoned hotel from the Sudanese government.
Ari Levinson: Lease, but yeah.
Mossad General Weiss: Abandoned because?
Ari Levinson: Because the area where it’s located is lawless. It’s controlled by the Hadandawa.
Mossad General Weiss: By the who?
Ari Levinson: It’s a Bedouin tribe.
Mossad Officer Tellem: Translates, The Lion Clan. Known for cannibalizing their enemies.
Ari Levinson: No. That’s, no, that’s… Not anymore. Now it’s human trafficking. Girls to Jedda, that sort of thing…
Ethan Levin: This just gets better and better.
Mossad General Weiss: So, your idea, just to reiterate, is to send a group of Jews to a Muslim country, to a place where they might get eaten by Bedouins, to run a fake hotel, in order to rescue a group of black Jews, who might or might not survive a thousand kilometer walk across the desert, to be smuggled out to sea by Israeli Navy Seals to an Israeli ship.
Ari Levinson: Disguised as a petroleum service vessel, yeah.
Mossad General Weiss: That’s ridiculous.
Ari Levinson: I need someone with your expertise, someone who can dive. What do you know about what’s happening in Ethiopia?
Jacob ‘Jake’ Wolf: It’s another bloody genocide, but nobody gives a shit because it’s in Africa.
Ari Levinson: Well, your Prime Minister decided to give a shit.
Ethan Levin: Just for the record, there’s not one person in this group that I would have chosen for this type of mission. You’re all too reckless. I’ve gone against every instinct I know. Broken every risk management rule I believe in, including sending a woman to a Muslim country. So let’s be very clear. This mission has no backup. There’s no exfil plan for you. You’re going in without guns, or any other weapon. If this goes wrong, you’ll all be hanging from cranes in Khartoum.
[referring to the refugees]
Ari Levinson: They’re dying, Sammy. And they’re sick, and they’re starving. And we’re not going to sit here and enjoy Aziz’s fucking cooking, and working on our suntan while they’re out there suffering, not if there’s something we can do about it.
Ari Levinson: What the fuck is that?
[Sammy looks through the binoculars]
Sammy Navon: A roadblock. We got to turn around. What are you doing?
Ari Levinson: Thinking.
Sammy Navon: Can you stop the truck and then think?
[over the radio comm]
Max Rose: Guys, you seeing this?
Sammy Navon: Yeah, we see it. We’re discussing.
Ari Levinson: Fuck! We can’t fail on our first operation.
Sammy Navon: Dying on our first operation is an equally bad idea. Did I ever mention a dry run?
[over the radio comm]
Ari Levinson: Jake, full speed ahead.
Sammy Navon: You’re fucking nuts.
Ari Levinson: Did I ever tell you my mother was on The Exodus?
Rachel Reiter: I thought she was from America.
Ari Levinson: My real mother. After they took my father, she boarded with the other survivors and set with nothing. Just the clothes on her back, and a little four year-old boy. They sailed for weeks. Finally reached the promised land, the Brits didn’t let them in, they turned them away. A young British officer felt sorry for her. Agreed to hide me. She gave me up.
Rachel Reiter: No, she saved you.
Ari Levinson: British officer met an American volunteer, and we moved to New York when I was seven. New parents, new life. I moved back to Israel the day I turned eighteen.
Rachel Reiter: We’re all just refugees, aren’t we?
Jacob ‘Jake’ Wolf: I almost shat in my wet suit.
Sammy Navon: Yeah, if that soldier hadn’t been too scared to admit he’d missed, we’d all be locked up right now.
Ari Levinson: Come here. What do you see?
[they look over at the beach with the tourists on it]
Sammy Navon: Unsuspecting collateral damage.
Rachel Reiter: Best cover we could ask for.
[referring to Ari’s plan]
Barack Isaacs: Real tourists? Like, what, real people?
Ethan Levin: His point being that now real people have already stayed at the hotel…
Barack Isaacs: Which was a fuck-up. So now he wants to make up for that major fuck-up with another major fuck-up, right?
Ethan Levin: This is why I was against this in the beginning, but I agree with him, the real tourists will actually make it easier to operate because no one will ask questions…
Barack Isaacs: Oh, come on.
Ethan Levin: …about a group of white people running a deserted hotel in the middle of Sudan if that hotel is no longer deserted.
Barack Isaacs: I shouldn’t have sanctioned this operation to begin with. I mean, real tourists, Ethan? I mean, unb… Can you imagine me telling the Prime Minister that our agency is operating a real hotel? “Oh, by the way, Mr. Prime Minister, our highly trained assassins are now in the fucking hospitality industry, in fucking Sudan!”
[pauses as he calms down]
Barack Isaacs: Never going to happen. Ethan, never!
Walton Bowen: If you ask me, this entire country is a fucking tinder box.
Ari Levinson: Really? We don’t really feel that out here.
Walton Bowen: No?
Ari Levinson: No.
Walton Bowen: Well, State’s sent cargo planes for us, ready to evac in the event things take a turn for the worse.
Ari Levinson: Oh.
Walton Bowen: And this refugee crisis, it’s really not helping. You have entire refugee neighborhoods just disappearing. Into thin air. The UN offers a stipend to the Sudanese for every refugee they house, so when people start to disappear that’s just bad for business.
Ari Levinson: Well, only crisis we face is whether or not we catch fresh lobster.
[they both laugh]
Ari Levinson: Just kidding.
Ari Levinson: I need you to do something for me, okay? I need you to get on this truck. It’s your turn. You’re going home.
Kabede Bimro: Ari, there are still hundreds crossing the border every week. Thousands more in Ethiopia still.
Ari Levinson: The Mukhabarat has your name. They’re after you.
Kabede Bimro: It’s not about me, it’s about them.
Ari Levinson: They know you’re smuggling people out. You’re no good to anybody if you’re dead. You’ve done enough.
Kabede Bimro: Enough? Enough is when all of us are in Jerusalem. All.
Sammy Navon: You think this kind of work is romantic? It’s not romantic, it’s practical. There’s a protocol. You can’t just make shit up as you go along and hope for the best.
Ari Levinson: I know that. What we do is dangerous. People get hurt sometimes.
Sammy Navon: Oh, I know!
[he holds up his injured hand]
Ari Levinson: Is that what this is about? Your hand? Tangiers?
Sammy Navon: You know, I was a surgeon before I met you, and you dare come into my clinic, and make a joke about me not saving lives.
Ari Levinson: What joke, when did I make a joke? What joke?
Sammy Navon: It’s not about my hand! It’s about you! It’s about you and me. They’re going to torture us and we’re going to die in here, and it’s because your ego won’t accept any help from anybody else. And no matter what you do, I still fucking follow you around like a little fucking dog!
Ethan Levin: You could have died last night. We were this close to having an all-out war between our Navy Seals and the Sudanese military. You were arrested, again. They have a file on you.
Ari Levinson: My job here isn’t finished.
Ethan Levin: Open your eyes. Look what’s happening in Khartoum. They’re arresting and executing dissidents. They’re beating uncovered women in the street. They’re expelling foreigners. Textbook revolution. It’s time to get out.
Ari Levinson: Please, Ethan, please.
Ethan Levin: I want you chaps home! I don’t need more bodies on my conscience. Take a few days to organize. And get the hell out of this godforsaken place.
Ari Levinson: The operation’s over. They pulled the plug. We’re going to go back to Israel and regroup. I’m so sorry, my hands are tied.
Kabede Bimro: If you want to go, then leave. But you will not take me with you. And you will not stand in my way.
Ari Levinson: The mission isn’t over for us, I promise.
Kabede Bimro: Mission? This is not a mission for me. This is my life. My family. You go.
Ari Levinson: I can’t force you guys to do this one. This is up to you. You know the risks.
Max Rose: I’m in.
[he looks over to Sammy; to Max]
Ari Levinson: Can you give us a sec?
[Max leaves them]
Ari Levinson: Whatever you want to do, I’ll back you up.
Sammy Navon: Fuck you.
Ari Levinson: You’re right. I’m an asshole. I let my ego get in the way. I get an idea, and I go with it. I don’t listen. I take risks. Sometimes it works, sometimes people get hurt. I’m sorry. And if you want to go home, I’ll back you up.
[last lines]
Kabede Bimro: There are thousands more, Ari.
Ari Levinson: I know. We’re going to go back, okay? I promise.
Kabede Bimro: [voice over] He kept his promise. We did go back. Again and again. We left no one behind. The Red Sea Diving Resort was not truly a hotel, but it embodied a higher truth. Perhaps the highest. When you see your brother or your sister suffering, you must not stay silent. Do not remain still. Go to their aid. Help them.
Total Quotes: 27
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Trailer:
Best quotes
The last one about helping brother and sister in their suffering