Okay film, could have been very good...

. . . if it weren't for a steady stream of plot holes and things that were underexplained.

For just a few examples (spoilers below):

* What happened to the idea of putting a bar on that beach? Isn't that why they were trying to get money in the first place?

* Why did Nino/Compi/Halil need to have Compi stay in Morocco when they had a bigger shipment to deal with, but nothing like this was an issue when they had the smaller shipments handled by Amina?

* Why was Halil suddenly able to use one of Rachid's bigger boats, or did he take it without permission?

* Where did the other boat they'd been using come from, then?

* Why did Rachid only bother with Halil when he found out whatever he found out? Did he find out only that Halil had been using his boats? Did he find out the whole scenario?

* How did Nino figure out where Amina lived?

* How would it take two hours to go across 10 miles of water on a jet ski?

* Why were Halil and Compi okay with the fact that they apparently stopped working for awhile when Nino brought Amina from Morocco, and how would Halil have no idea that Nino and Amina were seeing each other? Didn't Halil wonder what happened to Amina and why they suddenly had to come up with a different plan for getting goods out of Morocco?

* What happened to the helicopter pilot re being in a coma?

* What the heck was the deal with the people carrying goods like chocolate milk through some border? I didn't quite get that.

Some of the above problems/confusion (and maybe some of it was just confusion on my part) I figured were probably due to the English translation.

Aside from the frustration of having to wonder about that sort of stuff/having to always be sleuthing out just what was going on and why it was going on, there seemed to be a decent film here . . . well, although the police story side of it seemed a bit underdeveloped in the end, but the police story was still interesting, as was the "we're learning how to be big time criminals now" tale, and the characterization and relationships on both sides of the story were done very well, with good performances supporting all of that.

Excellent cinematography throughout and scrumptious locations.

It only took me about two seconds to fall in love with Amina/Mariam Bachir.

Ian McShane, who I'm a fan of, and who was one of the major reasons I decided to watch this, might as well have not even been in the film. They could have literally used a cardboard cutout of him. He only appears a couple minutes, a couple different times, he's kind of just in the "background" and never really says anything, etc. It's weird that they bothered to get him but they didn't do anything with him.