Black Gold: Press reviews

'You're left feeling that Black Gold could have been more incisive on the ways in which the Arab world, and indeed the whole world, has been reshaped by the oil industry. '

'Ambitious but very tedious and talkatively hackneyed, redeemed just a smidge by the money shots of a swarm of extras on horseback sweeping across the sands.'

'The real problem is that Black Gold is rather dull, and much too long for comfort.'

'A distinctly average adventure which has us wishing for more.'

'...proves Einstein's theory that space is curved. The screen is as wide as the universe, but the further you go in either direction the more you realise you have been there before'

'There's undoubtedly a good film to be made out of the scramble for oil in the Arabian desert in the 1920s – but this, for all its herculean efforts, is not it. '

'a tepid, timid affair'

'It's a tepid, timid affair, sexually, dramatically and politically.'

'Rarely have sheikhs been so fake'

'...doesn't really work as the lavish entertainment intended.'

'Banderas hams and Pinto flutters. If it weren't for Strong and some colourful art direction, you could chalk this up as a busted well.'

'punishingly tedious'

'All you will remember from it is sand, lots and lots of... sand.'