Summaries

Synopsis

Kabede Bimro (Michael K. Williams), an Ethiopian Hebrew in 1979, works with the Israeli Mossad agent Ari Levinson (Chris Evans) to evacuate Hebrew-Ethiopian refugees to Israel. Ari is constantly hunted by the Ethiopian army who is bent on genocide and killing of Hebrews whom they want to exterminate. Thousands have already been killed in the civil war that has dishonored and displaced millions till date.

Ari outsmarts the Ethiopian army to save every Hebrew life that he can. While evacuating them, they come across many convoys who were intercepted and burned alive and their daughters brutally sexually assaulted. Ari and Bimro, along with the refugees, cross the river into Sudan, where they are arrested for human trafficking. The CIA (who intervene on request of the Mossad) led by Walter Bowen helps Ari deal with the local authorities in Sudan and gets Ari and his colleague Sammy evacuated.The refugees are still stuck in Sudan and Ari does not have a plan to bring them to Israel.

Upon their return to Israel, Ari's colleague Sammy (Alessandro Nivola) says that in an crisis they would need a plan, and Ari never has one as he never sticks to the script and tries outrageous things to save one more refugee that puts the entire group in danger. Ari's wife Sarah (Alona Tal) has also left him due to his obsession with his job that keeps him away from his family for several weeks.

Ari realizes that his ability to operate in Ethopia would be improved if he had a cover activity that would give him a reason for having a building and vehicles. He proposes to Israeli intelligence officer Ethan Levin (Ben Kingsley) a plan that would allow him to evacuate significantly more refugees: rent the Red Sea Diving Resort, an abandoned Sudanese coastal hotel, and run it as a front to facilitate moving refugees out of the country by sea. Landing a plane without being noticed is near impossible, so evacuation by sea is the only viable bulk option. It takes 3 days by sea from Sudan to Sinai. He will need a team of agents with an international background.

The resort was built by Italians in the 1970's and abandoned 5 years ago as the area of Sudan is ruled by Bedouins (known to cannibalize their enemies) and known for human trafficking.The resort if 50 Kms north of port Sudan. The Sudanese Govt is looking to lease it to boost tourism. The Ethiopians they rescue would have to trek almost a 1000 Kms through the desert to reach the resort.

The unorthodox plan is reluctantly approved, and Ari recruits his former Mossad colleagues Rachel Reiter (Haley Bennett), Jake Wolf (Michiel Huisman), Max Rose (Alex Hassell), and Sammy Navon (Alessandro Nivola) to assist him. Ari tells Sammy that this time he has a plan to make a real difference.Ethan warns them that the mission is risky and that there is no Exfiltration plan for the agents in case they are discovered. They are going in without weapons and if found out they will be hanged from cranes in Khartoum.Ari and Rachel pose as American businessmen to lease the resort for USD 350,000 per year, USD 250,000 as rent and USD 100,000 as bribe to the minister.

Bimro makes contact with Ari, and they start planning the evacuation of first batch of refugees.Shortly after the team's arrival in Sudan, the brochures they had printed inspire actual tourists to begin arriving at the resort. Although hosting guests was not originally part of the plan, Levinson realizes the tourists will provide cover for the team's operations, so the team runs the resort as a legitimate business while simultaneously evacuating refugees to a waiting Israeli ship off the coast.

The refugees are brought from their camp to the resort in the middle of the night and then transported to a ship waiting off the coast, via rubber dinghies. In the first batch, they manage to transport 174 refugees to the ship.

Ari ignores Sammy's call for a dry run, and on their way from the camp to the resort, the trucks encountered a random checkpoint which Ari drove through. Sammy remarks that due to Ari's actions, the next time it won't be a random checkpoint.The Checkpoint soldiers report to Colonel Ahmed that the trucks driver was not a Bedouin, but a white man. Ahmed comes to check the resort but finds no bullet holes in the trucks and a group of German tourists getting a sun tan on the beach convinces him that this is a legitimate operation. In fact, the checkpoint soldiers had missed the truck while firing at it, and were just too scared to report that to Ahmed.

The plan is initially successful, and multiple extraction operations are carried out (3640 Ethiopian Hebrews evacuated to Israel across more than 17 missions), but the Sudanese Colonel Abdel Ahmed (Chris Chalk) learns of Bimro after interrogating and then killing a group of refugees in the Gedaref refugee camp.

Ahmed visits the resort to investigate but does not discover the refugee operation. Walton Bowen (Greg Kinnear) is from CIA and knows of Ari's operations in Sudan. He visits him at the resort to warn him of Ahmed, when he learns that Ahmed killed hundreds of refugees upon discovering them.

One night, Ari and Sammy are arrested after an evacuation mission narrowly escapes from Sudanese soldiers. They are released (when Rachel meets the minister and bribes him to intervene in the matter) and return to the resort to find Levin awaiting the duo; he tells the group the mission has been compromised and that it is canceled.

Ahmed again visits the resort, and Rachel is forced to kill one of Ahmed's men after the soldier discovers a group of refugees hiding there. To evacuate them, Ari decides to perform a final refugee extraction by cargo plane with assistance from Walton Bowen (Greg Kinnear), a CIA officer.

Ari and his team transport the refugees to an abandoned British airfield. The team and Bimro narrowly escape Ahmed and extract themselves and the refugees.