Dark of the Sun (1968) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 2

  Highly questionable depiction of African revolution in this ultraviolent men-on-a-mission movie but it's also got one of the more unsparing and barbarous visions of war profiteering I've ever seen (they hardly even pretend to dress up their actions as anything else, and the body count that occurs as a result is genuinely absurd) with an extra dose of righteously thick skepticism towards Western proxy power. Also features what I think might have been the first-ever cinematic chainsaw fight lol. "The gun is Chinese, paid for by Russian rubles. The steel probably came from a West German factory built by French francs. Then it was flown out here on a South African airline probably subsidized by the United States."

• Review by Sean Baker 1

  I didn't know anything about this film except that it had a chainsaw fight and Tarantino used a track from the score in Inglourious Basterds.

  Aged a little too much for me to be fully engaged but had fun. Pulpy and violent. I read that multiple cuts were made to the film before and after being submitted to the ratings board and it's still quite graphic. They must have run out of light a few times because I've never seen so many night for day shots in a film. Also, it's Jamaica for Congo and well... Congo doesn't have Jamaican Georgian architecture.

  Warner Archive provides a nice remastered version of the film and
  Special Features:
  - Theatrical Trailer (3 min) HD
  - New Audio Commentary by Trailers From Hell's Larry Karaszewski and Josh Olson with Brian Saur and Elric D. Kane

• Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 1

  "I'd do it. But I wouldn't like it."

• Review by Joe ★★★★ 12

  Some pretty insane action here, including a chainsaw fight almost as exciting as depicted in the poster - my favorite bit is Rod Taylor's character (but, presumably, not Rod Taylor), jumping over an explosion between two train cars to get from one to the other. But it's also got a moral center that later action-adventure movies would very rarely have, with an ending that acknowledges the moral debt incurred even in killing an evil Nazi. Although ... I'm firmly against capital punishment and that motherfucker deserved to die.

• Review by laird ★★★★★ 1

  "Keep your mouth off me... 'cause you're not in good enough shape." - Rod Taylor, looking tougher than anyone else could have in a beret and short pants.

• Review by Channing Pomeroy ★★★★½ 1

  “Now this isn’t a World War II film, this isn’t even armies… This is a film about Mercenaries on a mission through the African Congo. This movie will deliver, I’m telling you that, this movie will deliver.” Quentin Tarantino (who pinched a musical cue from the score for Inglorious Basterds

  The movie’s title and Congo setting resonate with Heart of Darkness. Then it was ivory, now it’s diamonds. King Leopold is gone but his vacuum has been filled by other proxies with the same cruel methods. If Heart of Darkness is about fear of savagery outside us, Dark of the Sun explores the fear of descending into the savagery within us: “primitive” beliefs, the Simbas, Nazism, the savagery of revenge.…

• Review by HKFanatic ★★★★ 2

  Holy hell! If, like me, you've always thought of "The Wild Bunch" as the film that introduced stylized ultra-violence to the modern Hollywood vernacular, make a date with 1968's "Dark of the Sun." Featuring Rod Taylor ("The Birds") and NFL hero Jim Brown, this is a unflinching Men on a Mission flick about two soldiers of fortune who plunge deep into the Congo to rescue a mine company's workers—and some $50 million worth of diamonds—only to come face to face with an inferno of face-melting violence and inhumanity. Another great cult flick I wouldn't have sought out or even heard about if it weren't for the Letterboxd fam.

• Review by More_Badass ★★★★

  Dark of the Sun came out a year before The Wild Bunch but plays like a movie that came out in Peckinpah’s wake, a film carved from mean ‘70s grit.

  Heist movie, train movie, men-on-a-mission movie: Jack Cardiff’s Congo actioner is lean, rugged, smartly tackling its themes of racism and morality while still being explosively violent. Scorsese and Tarantino are fans, which speaks volumes on how it’s a film of economical momentum with a message and also a film with guns-blazing action where an unrepentant ex-Nazi swings a chainsaw around. Rod Taylor channels Lee Marvin in The Professionals: get-it-done professionalism, eruptive anger, haggard frustration as a tight plan goes sideways in brutal fashion. Jim Brown is really solid as well, delivering a performance that acts as the film’s moral fulcrum.

  And for once, the poster doesn’t lie.

• Review by Timcop ★★★★½

  "Put that Swastika back on. You've earned it."

  A tough-as-hell nihilistic action picture that doesn't skimp on reminding the audience of its context or its conflict. The presence of colonialist exploitation and African warlord terror adds a tragic backdrop to what is essentially a Western about men profiteering off the misery of others. From Rod Taylor's bosses, who put the acquisition of diamonds above the lives of people to the scummy and traitorous (possibly?) ex-Nazi, no one is exempt from this film's finger pointing, not even the heroes. Taylor's speech about how the genocidal warlords are supported and encouraged by Western interests is especially refreshing for a Hollywood picture of this era. Also features Jim Brown playing one of the least convincing native Africans ever.

• Review by Justin LaLiberty ★★★★ 2

  had been putting off actually watching this for years due to my own absurd logic of thinking there was zero chance the film could match the energy of its utterly masculine one sheet but, I’m happy to say, it matches it and then ups the violence and bravado to extremes that feel all but anachronistic for 1968, predicting the type of gory gusto that Peckinpah would unleash in the following year — and, yes, the chainsaw fight is glorious

• Review by Daniel88 ★★★★ 3

  How come I have never heard or seen this movie before? Martin Scorsese has described it as one of his ‘guilty pleasures’ and if that wasn’t enough, then the poster of Dark of the Sun certainly was convincing. And yes, the chainsaw fight depicted on the poster really is in this 1960s action pic that, despite being relatively unknown, really belongs up there along the likes of The Professionals (1966) and Where Eagles Dare (1968). The action scenes are fast, sometimes even epic and quite violent. Violence is not something I easily associate with the cinematographer of Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948), but it makes it all the more interesting that it is Jack Cardiff who would…

• Review by More_Badass ★★★★ 1

  The jarringly obvious blue screen still stains the final act a bit for me, but Rod Taylor, Jim Brown, the volatile mercenary procedural thrills, and Jack Cardiff’s unflinching brutality make Dark of The Sun a men-on-a-mission gem. The balance of no-nonsense mercs-on-a-train pulp and steely economical characterizations is the kind of finely-tuned action/drama ratio that few of its ilk can match. Strikingly vicious, mean, and nihilistic for 1968.