Opening during the 2003 Guinea-Bissau coup d’état, Jean Luc Herbulot’s Saloum charts the bloody aftermath of a strike by a trio of mercenaries known as Bangui’s Hyenas who are under contract with the new powers that be to take down drug kingpins. The pacing throughout ably reflects the men’s skill, especially as the camera whirls over the stunning number of dead bodies left by the fighters on their way to abduct a South American cartel liaison (Renaud Farah). And the tone of this bloodbath is in the key of a Sam Peckinpah western, promising a film about badasses ably mowing through any and all obstacles.
Instead, things pivot when a fuel leak in the group’s getaway plane forces them to put down just over the Senegalese border in the Saloum delta. As the men and their captive work through the brackish marshes of the region to stay ahead of any possible reprisals, the film’s pace slows and the camera pulls back into gliding, bird’s-eye shots of them boating along curvy rivers. These hypnotic moments diffuse the thrills of the opening segment to set up a turn toward something more ominous when the Hyenas’ leader, Chaka (Yann Gael), brings the characters to a remote hotel run by an affable, laidback concierge named Omar (Bruno Henry), whose smile falters a bit when Chaka mentions offhandedly that they’ve met before.
As the Hyenas hide out in the hotel planning their next move, Saloum finally hits a consistent tonal groove that keys itself to the increasing sense that Chaka led his comrades to this area for reasons other than mere circumstance, which generates a sense of ambient paranoia that only expands as some of Omar’s other guests begin to harbor suspicions about the new arrivals. Herbulot traces these mounting pressures on the Hyenas through economical direction that prioritizes such cues as the exchange of nervous looks between the mercenaries, Omar, and the other guests as more information about Chaka’s background and Omar’s strange, deceptively philanthropic relationship with a nearby village come slowly into focus.
Herbulot also places a great deal of trust in his cast to get across information without bogging down the film in exposition dumps, and each actor says a great deal with little more than a sideways glance or a shift in demeanor. The mohawked Rafa (Roger Sallah) is brusque and trigger-happy, always on the verge of blowing up at the nearest target, while the more taciturn Minuit (Mentor Ba) acts as silent observer. Between them lies Chaka, whom Gael infuses with an unreadable face and an inherent charisma that can freeze when necessary into an ominous, threatening presence when someone starts to pry too deeply into their cover stories. This builds to a head when Chaka finally lays bare his connection to Omar with a monologue that links together the film’s ambiguous narrative tendrils and binds them to the harrowing modern history of postcolonial violence internal conflict in African nations.
And just as quickly as all of this comes into focus, Saloum takes yet another swerve by unleashing a supernatural horror that Omar had held in check in the surrounding area. This could easily have derailed the film, but Herbulot’s concision manages to bridge the jump by foregrounding a distillation of John Carpenter’s distinctive energy as the characters fight back against the swarm of malevolent spirits (shades of Assault on Precinct 13). That Carpenter-by-way-of-Hawks aesthetic brio only deepens with the enhanced role played during this final act by the tough-as-nails Awa (Evelyne Ily Juhen), one of the guests at Omar’s hostel whose deafness becomes an asset in dealing with the monsters, who attack people via their senses.
At only 80 minutes, Saloum could easily have rushed through what’s effectively three separate plots, but it moves with such visual and structural precision that it manages to flow into each new, wild narrative wrinkle as if it were the most logical thing in the world. The film airs its characters’ personal rage as a response to modern political situations in the region, but it also goes deeper to channel some more ancient, mythical evil that complicates the subtext beyond simple allegory. What remains is a quest for survival, albeit one that acknowledges that death brings its own closure in a world that never stops finding new threats to attack us.
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