Saloum

Shot down while fleeing a coup, and extracting a drug lord from Guinea-Bissau, a group of mercenaries must lie low at a remote holiday camp, as they repair their plane, so they can escape back to Dakar, Senegal, only to find something else waiting there for them.

Saloum is a Senegalese action-horror with French subtitles, directed by Congolese director Jean Luc Herbulet, centering on a group of legendary mercenaries known as Bangui’s Hyenas. While very much rooted in West African culture, as well as the modern political realities of the area, this is also the kind of story that is instantly familiar here in America.

Chaka, Rafa, and Papa Minuit are not strictly bad men, but they aren’t strictly good men either. They’re warriors, shades of gray walking amongst the dead, hired guns who specialize in spilling blood for money, with a long trail of bodies in their wake. They are men who will do the job, for the right price. They are brothers-in-arms who have long walked the path of war together. They are also desperate men trying to get rich, trying to get out, trying for all the usual reasons to leave the life they now live for a better one. But when a bit of bad luck throws a wrench into the carefully laid escape plan of their latest job, forcing them to hide out in an off-the-grid meditative retreat, these red-handed men soon discover there’s more than just metaphorical monsters waiting there them… there’s literal ones too.

Also, the three of them are super-cool looking too, each with their own distinctive specialty and style. I love that.

Saloum mixes those familiar Western and horror influences, using morality, mythology, mysticism, and gunfights in a scary crime thriller type of story set in a scrubland wilderness kind of setting, but all done with a distinctly African voice that gives everything a fresh shine.

Stylish and cool, with some good violence, and some great characters, The film does an excellent job of exploring the bonds of brotherhood and loyalty, the ties that bind, and the experiences that make us who we are, all while using its malignant spirits as a stand-in for the inescapable legacy, both the physical reprecussions and the emotional scars, that are left behind by the brutality of war. This was an all around good time, and a good film.

I’m interested in seeing more from Herbulet.