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04/23/09
Bamako (2006)
85
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:53
Fresh:45
Rotten:8
Average Rating:7.1/10
Consensus: A courtroom drama and a portrait of everyday Mali life, Bamako approaches both subjects with equal skill and success.
Theatrical Release:Feb 14, 2007 Limited
Synopsis: The life of a troubled couple from a town in Mali is the focus of director Abderrahmnane Sissako’s BAMAKO. While the husband, Chaka, is out of work, Mele is barely scraping by as a singer in a... [More]
Starring: Danny Glover, Aissa Maiga, Tiecoura Traore, Maimouna Helene Diarra
Director: Abderrahmnane Sissako
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Reviews for Bamako
Awkward, dull film.
04/19/07
After the resonant and lyrical experience of Sissako's criminally unseen Waiting for Happiness, which could have been an alternate title for Bamako, this new film represents a colossal downgrade.
09/26/06
A clumsy, talk-heavy and crushingly heavy-handed hybrid. While it may have the best of intentions, Bamako is sometimes hard to watch.
08/16/07
That the G8's policies have been disastrous for Africa won't come as news to anyone who goes to see African art-house films.
02/26/07
Much of the nearly two-hour film consists of impassioned but lengthy speeches about interest rates, deficits, poverty and corruption. This is no way to entertain an audience, so Sissako throws in a few hastily drawn characters and a threadbare plot.
02/14/07
The central conceit is audacious, but the film feels oddly slack and inert, livened only by testimony better suited to another forum.
02/17/07
Ironically, in an attempt to give Africans a voice, Sissako drowns them out.
02/20/07
While worthy, Bamako suffers somewhat fromits structure. Some of the testimony becomes so complicated that unless you are an expert or really truly versed on the subject, you just might tune out (as I found myself doing on occasion).
02/02/07
By all accounts the year's best African film.
09/23/06
Bamako is a work of cool intelligence and profound anger, a long, dense, argument that is also a haunting visual poem.
02/14/07
Top CriticIssue-driven drama has rarely been so polemic as it is in this fierce attack on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's role in African poverty.
06/13/08
It's surprisingly moving, funny, tragic, strange and undogmatic.
10/06/06
Top Critic[An] intimate, urgent and wildly imaginative indictment of post-colonial economic policies in Africa.
06/14/07
In the week of The Good Shepherd this stinging indictment of Western involvement in the Third World is timely - or would be, if anyone bothered to see it.
02/23/07
Born of indignation, Bamako bears devastating witness to the iniquities of free trade and globalisation from a Malian perspective.
02/23/07
Free of the indignant self-righteousness of Michael Moore's lowbrow sloganeering, Abderrahmane Sissako's poetic drama offers a clear-sighted examination of Third World economic collapse.
08/09/07
If Jean-Luc Godard had kept his sense of humor, he might be making engaging movies like Bamako.
06/28/07
Abderrahmane Sissako makes no pretence at neutrality with this indictment of globalised capitalism.
02/20/07
Rather miraculously, pic succeeds in painlessly educating its viewers about global politics and economics while it describes contemporary Africa with freshness and clarity.
05/25/06
Latest News for Bamako
February 15, 2007:
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