Black Gold (2011)

Two little princes become hostages to a neighbouring emirate. They grow up, get involved with the daughter of their captor. Oil is discovered in the no-man's land. Hilarity ensues.

It's an old fashioned romance about heroism and derring-do that John Milius (Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, Hunt for Red October) might have written in the 1980s.

Watch for: how the film avoids being a political piece about the beginnings of western dependency on Middle Eastern oil and the American intervention and imperialism in Arabia.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 14 November 2012.