Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Sudan, East Africa, 1980. A team of Israeli Mossad agents plans to rescue and transfer thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. To do so, and to avoid raising suspicions from the inquisitive and ruthless authorities, they establish as a cover a fake diving resort by the Red Sea.
The Red Sea Diving Resort tells a genuinely compelling true story with solid procedural tension, but the screenplay simplifies the historical events into a fairly conventional spy-thriller formula, blunting the moral complexity. The ensemble cast (Chris Evans, Haley Bennett, Ben Kingsley) performs competently without anyone delivering a standout turn. Visually, the film is competent but unremarkable — serviceable location photography without distinctive cinematographic choices. The premise itself carries inherent novelty as a little-known Cold War rescue operation, but the execution leans on familiar heist-thriller tropes that diminish its distinctiveness. The ending deflates the tension somewhat, resolving in a rushed, emotionally unsatisfying way that undersells the real human stakes of the story.