Tuareg: Desert Warrior - 1984

I did a bunch (5 minutes worth) of research trying to find the book which this movie is based on while the end played out.  Because I am a firm believer that the book is usually better than the movie, and also because I bet you that's multiplied 1000 times in this case, when you have a rather boring film by Enzo G. Castellari. Taureg is based on the Spanish book translated to "The Eyes of Taureg" from award winning author, Alberto Vazquez Figueroa. He also apparently wrote the book on which late entry Brian Yuzna film Rottweiler is based.  Well, now I really have to read that book.  Too bad I can't find the damn thing in English.

Taureg starts off like it's going to be a long, dramatic adventure type movie.  You can probably judge this movie based on the first ten minutes and be completely correct about it.  Now, normally I would not advocate that.  But in this case....yeah.  I like how IMDB classifies this as action adventure. This is drama, or I don't even know.  This one evades categorization, and not in a really good way.  In the way where there is nowhere else to put a movie that's mostly dialogue, very slow, and doesn't involve anything really happening, you know?

Taureg is a nomad, a desert warrior that is actually very peaceful and just wants to do his own thing.  He's a desert worn survivalist, fit for the desert like a cactus.  When two water parched men stumble into his camp, he decides to care for them.  Turns out the Arabic rulers want the men and they demand the return of the men, shooting one of them dead and kidnapping the other.  Now Taureg goes in pursuit of the captured man.

Who knows, who cares.  It's a very "time wastey" feeling movie, it's 97 minutes where 20 or more feels like it could've cut off, and the rest needs to be structured better..  Leading man Mark Harmon is good and looks the part, but most of the time we just witness him staring emphatically at things and saying stuff that sounds very vague.

It's funny, because it gets ok reviews online and I guess if you're looking for a sort of a politically charged, dramatic take on character-isms, you might like this movie.  I wanted some Indiana Jones feeling desert warrior movie, like the name promised me with calling it fucking Desert Warrior.  But I feel like my expectation was misled and I wouldn't have even tried to see this if it was instead called like, Taureg: Desert Guy.....  Okay, there's some action in it.  In one scene Taureg gets the drop on some baddies and makes them strip nude.  In another he kills his camel so he can drink it's blood when he's been without water too long.  And then there's the end.

I feel like I missed something.  Spoilers will be present here.  Tuareg has the man he's been caring for die on him.  Then Tuareg hears that the current political leader has executed his family.  Tuareg goes to the capital, and in a insane sequence, he shoots the president of the country while the guy is doing a drive down a street.  But the president is the guy Tuareg was looking after?  The guy we saw die not ten minutes ago?  Huh?  I don't understand.

I don't know what happened in this movie, and I won't watch it again.  1 star for the camel death scene.