This thriller has some points in its favour. It’s directed by Iranian Babak Anvari who made Under the Shadow in Teheran some years back.
It has Hugh Bonneville playing a really evil villain which is a nice change.
Kelly MacDonald a Scottish actress who appears in films from time to time plays a good foil. And despite some massive issues it is quite a well-paced intriguing experience for the moviegoer.
The title is a tag of some graffiti artists who break into rich people’s homes and leave their calling card as a sort of protest against the rich bourgeoisie.
Toby, one of the taggers here breaks into the house of a retired judge Sir Hector Blake (Bonneville) and discovers that this supposed pillar of the establishment and champion of liberal causes has a huge secret hidden in his house.
Although the police are called, nothing concrete is found and his contacts in high places bring the investigation to a close. Nevertheless Lizzie, a psychologist and mother of Toby, now disappeared, continues to try to get to the bottom of the things, putting her life and others in danger.
One of her son’s friends J, played by Percelle Ascott ends up taking the baton to fight the evil of Sir Hector leading to a fairly predictable end.
The problem is that despite all the attempts by director and writer to account for the behaviour of the characters and the reasons why X person did not report Y, etc, the film ends up being one where you want to shout at the screen and say “Don’t do that!” or “Get some other type of help!” There are just too many slip ups and not very logical plot items for comfort.
Bonneville, MacDonald and Ascott do a good job, Varada Sethu has a rather one-tone role and George Mackay overacts as Toby.
Somewhere in Anvari there is an excellent thriller but it is not this one despite efforts to include commentaries on migrants and on the establishment in Britain which considers that it deserves everything as of right.
2 stars
passionfilm 