Waiting for the Barbarians (2019)

Colonel Joll (Johnny Depp), a noted figure from the capitol, arrives at an outpost town on the far edge of the empire.  The town magistrate (Mark Rylance) welcomes him and offers whatever assistance he might require.  Among his friends, the magistrate chuckles at the Colonel's mission, declaring that once every generation there arises a fear that the nomadic tribes will rise to attack the empire.  The following day, Joll interrogates a pair of sheep rustlers.  When he is done, one of them is dead and the other has revealed a planned rising among the desert tribes.  The magistrate finds this ludicrous, but Joll sets out into the desert and returns with more nomads to interrogate.  When Joll leaves to report his findings, the magistrate releases all the captured tribesmen and tries to return the town to its pre-Joll state.  However, there is a blind woman (Gana Bayarsaikhan) who begs in the streets.  The magistrate takes her in and eventually discovers that she was blinded, had her ankles broken, and was severely scarred by Joll's interrogations.  The magistrate offers to return her to her people and sets out into the desert with her and a small escort.  Upon his return, Officer Mandel (Robert Pattinson) has taken over the outpost and arrests the magistrate for consorting with the enemy.

The movie plays as a morality tale.  Joll sees an uprising that does not exist and through his efforts to expose it, he has created an uprising.  The peaceful co-existence that had stood for year was broken thanks to the intervention of an emissary from the distant capitol who did not understand the region.  Worse, he ignored the magistrate who was quite familiar with the people and customs.

Based on the uniforms and the setting, I had guessed this was supposed to be the French Foreign Legion in North Africa, but it is a purely fictional empire.  Most of the characters are nameless; that works fine in films, but it is awkward in writing.

Though well-acted, the story is unengaging.  The magistrate is a learned man whose hobbies include archeology and cryptography, but he is often detached from current events.  Sure, he sees what is going on and does not approve, but he is passive about it.  He's just a victim of this series of events.  Victims rarely make for good protagonists, even if they are the only moral and upright characters.

Mediocre.  Skip.