CinemaSerf
5.0/10Jun 04, 2022
When young "Mona" (Aiysha Hart) bravely decides to walk away from her arranged marriage - made when she was but a child - and run away with her boyfriend "Tanvir" (Nikesh Patel), her family decide that she must be stopped, and pretty much at all costs. To that end her mother and police officer brother "Kasim" (Faraz Ayub) enlist the help of an un-named, and particularly odious bounty hunter played by Paddy Considine who takes on the job. Along the way, though, he begins to have a bit of a change of heart and that's where the story gets a little bit more interesting - perhaps he will even end up helping her out? This really isn't a very nice film to watch. It is full of hatred and loathing that is possibly made more potent because the mother is the most unsympathetic of characters in this nest of intolerance and religious restriction. What really lets it down, though, is the acting. Nobody here is really very good; the supporting cast deliver their performances with very little confidence or style - their lack of experience is writ large and that drags the film down frequently. There is no subtlety or panache to the production. The angry rock-style score, the weak and derivative dialogue and the lacklustre direction deliver a thing of disappointing mediocrity. The substance of these ghastly familial "honour" killings is thrown under the bus of over-dramatisation leaving us with something that could have done so much more to illustrate just how, even now, women from some communities are considered little better than chattels. Pity.
Read full review
