Jean Luc Herbulot’s Saloum is the exact kind of mixed-genre treat that cements my love for the wild world of international cinema. With no shortage of style, humor, and political subtext, this Senegalese gem accomplishes more in a scant 84-minutes than most television shows do in a whole season, and most franchises do in a decade. It’s an efficient film, no doubt, but it’s also savagely entertaining and smart, and further marks Senegal as an emerging hotbed of inventive genre cinema. Fans of fast-paced and intelligent action/horror take note.
Initially operating in the vein of a gonzo neo-western, Saloum introduces us to a famed trio of mercenaries called Bangui’s Hyenas (a very cool clique played with ease and charming menace by Yan Gael, Roger Sallah, and Mentor Ba) as they participate in the extraction of a drug lord during the chaotic 2003 coup d’état in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. Forced to take refuge in a rural area of Senegal known as Saloum, the group finds themselves at a vacation resort that isn’t quite what it seems. There’s something off about the residents and other guests, but with problems (and secrets) of their own, the Hyenas press on with their escape plan – that is until everything goes completely haywire. As it turns out, their presence in Saloum isn’t accidental, but rather by a careful design – a design that comes with unforeseen supernatural consequences.
Paying wonderful homage to the best and bloodiest Spaghetti Westerns, along with an emerging exploration of African folk horror, Herbulot mixes and matches his approach into one of the year’s most exciting and quick-witted high octane thrillers. On these merits alone, Saloum is a success, but the director, with co-writer Pamela Diop, take things up a notch by augmenting their shoot-em-up style with scathing indictments of the indoctrination and exploitation of child soldiers, the trauma caused by such horrendous acts, and the futility and cyclical nature of revenge – all with a brilliant eye that slants toward a fascinating landscape of African myth and legend. Add to that, when taken in context with other recent Senegalese triumphs like 2019’s Atlantics, Saloum becomes not just a wonderful genre outlier, but part of a rising movement of West African political filmmaking that shows nothing but promise.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.