...And 5 That Sucked
5. Sultan Amar - Black Gold
Not so much a terrible performance from Strong as much as it is a horrible bout of miscasting, the Austrian-Italian Strong makes a passable effort to play an Arab here, but at the end of the day, it's just insulting Hollywood "whitewashing" at its worst, as is the casting of Antonio Banderas in a pivotal role (probably the result of a Hollywood exec saying, "He looks brown enough"). It's just incredibly difficult to take Strong seriously as a character called Sultan Amar, not least because he's known for playing British gangsters throughout his career, but because he's not even the right colour to be playing the damn character! Though the film tries to make a serious point, this is undercut by poor casting which smacks of old school Hollywood, and in a time in which there are hundreds of talented Arab actors who could have played the parts, it seems more than a little insulting, all the more so considering that it was made with Arab money. Strong
tries, but it's really just a bit cringe-inducing.