It’s been awhile since I’ve checked on the doings of Dr. Uwe Boll. Say what you want about the man, he’s nothing less than a dynamo of cinematic endeavors. A quick glance of his IMDB page shows no less than nine projects in the pipeline for the recent Razzie Award winner. The usual stuff is there: Bloodrayne 3 and Zombie Massacre of course; Blackout – The Film, about terrorists who destroy all the power stations in the Western Hemisphere; and Rampage, about a man out for revenge in a suit of kevlar armor. A couple of unusual entries in that list include a Max Schmeling biopic and…a pic on Sudan. As in Darfur. Darfur. Epicenter of the latest round of horrific African ethnic cleansing. Not zombies nor vampires but actual human beings being ruthlessly slaughtered in real life. Yeah, that Darfur. Uwe Boll. And Darfur…okay.
Concerning that pic, which is either to be titled Darfur or Janjaweed, depending on which source you look up (IMDB for the former, Variety for the latter), word has it that Edward Furlong is reteaming with Boll to tell the story of American journalists confronting atrocities in Sudan. Not some exotic kind of hash, rather, the term “janjaweed” refers to the cocksuckers on horseback who get their shits and giggles by mowing down the local populace by machine gun, machete or whatever’s handy. Furlong and Boll have recently gotten together on the upcoming Stoic, which IMDB describes as a heated game of poker causes three men incarcerated for nonviolent
offenses to brutalize their cellmate before taking drastic measures in
order to cover up their crime. Furlong will be joining Kristanna Loken and Billy Zane on the pic, which will be shooting in Cape Town, South Africa.
Forgive me for not being too optimistic that Boll can pull off anything even approaching something of the gravitas of a Hotel Rwanda or The Constant Gardener. Considering the usual tomfuckery he has on screen, one has to wonder if he’ll have the Sudanese (i.e. South Africans, but who cares, they’re all just part of the same country of Africa, right?) in zombie make-up, and / or fangs just to satisfy his core fans, if there is such a thing. Furlong must have found something that he liked in working with Boll, though to sign back up for something this heavy. Oh, and supposedly, most of the dialogue will be ad-libbed. To give it that last bit of realism.