Tag: morocco

The Moderator

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★½
“Falls far, far short of reaching moderate”

Oh, dear. Where to start? Let’s get the positives out of the way. This looks reasonable enough, and clearly was not a poverty-row production. The central idea isn’t bad either: while a vigilante killer taking out misogynistic online sexists is a fairly ludicrous concept, if you squint a bit, you can see how it could have become an acerbic comment on the toxicity of social media. And that’s all I’ve got. For any potential is ruthlessly exterminated by staggeringly feeble execution. We’re there inside two minutes, when an unnamed Russian supermodel wakes, to get a video message from two pals vacationing in Morocco, then turns on the TV immediately to see a news report about them being executed by ISIS, with the video online for all to see. Wait, what?

Ms. Supermodel then visits a shadowy character who gives her a small rucksack telling her it contains everything she needs, including her new identity as “Mya Snik”. This is only the second-dumbest name, because later on we hear of somebody called, I kid you not, Dr. Akula. No, really. The rucksack also contains a scorpion, for no reason ever made clear. Mya then heads off on a somewhat ruthless pursuit of random Internet trolls, leading up to serial rapist and shitty white rapper, Vance Wilhorn (Lane), who is in Morocco too, abusing any young woman stupid enough to hang out with him. And we are talking very, very stupid, as shown by this stunningly terrible piece of dialogue:
    “Do you want to get raped or what?”
    “Oh, come on – don’t start that again…”

Once more, this might all have been tolerable, had it focused on Mya giving scummy perverts their comeuppance. Instead, there are meandering subplots about the Interpol pursuit of her, led by agent Bourdeau (Dourdan), and local cop Selma (Azzabi). The latter lets Mya go after capturing her, because her prisoner recites crime statistics at her, apparently boring the policewoman into hypnotic compliance or something. We hardly ever see Mya even lightly kick significant butt, and her talents evaporate entirely at points. One minute, she’s efficiently taking down security personnel in a resort (albeit to no real purpose). The next, she can’t beat a fat Moroccan tour-guide, who can barely waddle away. I’m not impressed.

There are few things worse than a film which clearly wants to make an earnest point (as evidenced by the quoting of statistics), yet is incapable of doing anything except repeatedly shooting itself in the foot. We’re given no reason to root for or care about the heroine, or anybody else in the picture for that matter. The action is largely feeble, though I did have to laugh at the Interpol agents chasing on foot after Mya’s motor-cycle, which then conveniently falls over. And if you want to see attractive Moroccan scenery, you’d be better off with a Tourist Board promo video. Definitely a candidate for worst movie of the year.

Dir: Zhor Fassi-Fihri
Star: Irma Lake, Michael Patrick Lane, Gary Dourdan, Soraya Azzabi

Traitors

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★★★½
“Punk’s not dead.”

traitorsWhat counts as an “action heroine” is dependent on culture. As was saw in Offside, if you’re Iranian, something as apparently normal as going to a football game can be a dangerously transgressive act. The heroine here, Malika (Ben Acha), has a little more freedom, living in Morocco, but it’s hardly an oasis of feminist freedom by Western standards. Still, she’s pretty out there, being the lead singer in a punk band, the titular Traitors, and also a dab hand with a monkey wrench, working intermittently in her father’s garage. It’s the former that she sees as her ticket out, and a door opens when a producer expresses interest in the band, and offers to help them record a demo. The catch? They have to pay for the studio time themselves: that’s several months’ wages, and it doesn’t help that Malika has just been fired. But a garage customer (Zeguendi) offers her a solution: a one-night job doing a little driving for him.

She’s under no illusions about the reality of what she’s driving, but on the journey from the mountains to Tangiers, she talks to her fellow “mule,” the veteran Amal (Issami), and discovers the unpleasant truths about those she’s working for – worse still, the people above them – as well as that leaving the organization will probably be a lot harder than joining it. When Malika finds out that Amal is pregnant, she hatches a plan that’s either very brave or extremely foolhardy (not that these things are mutually exclusive), to allow her colleague the change to escape. However, doing so will certainly bring down the wrath of her employers, who have a track record of not tolerating employee disloyalty with a forgiving eye.

This is one of those films that is on the fringes of qualification for the site. Malika doesn’t wield a gun or kick anyone’s arse,  but there’s an exchange between the two young women which convinced me of its worth, and that in spirit at least, the heroine is part of the sisterhood we cover here.

Amal: “There was a proverb my mother used to say: if you are the nail, you must endure the knocking.”
Malika: “That’s only half of the proverb. The other part is: if you are the hammer, strike.”

I want that on a T-shirt, and it exemplifies Malika’s attitude perfectly: she’s a hammer made flesh, like her hero, the late Joe Strummer. Of course, the downside of that is, when you’re a hammer, everything else starts looking like a nail. However, Ben Acha does a good job of making a character that could easily have been obnoxious and abrasive, sympathetic instead. The film’s biggest weakness is a script that seems to run out of steam before the end, without anything like a satisfactory climax; instead, it peters out in a not very satisfactory and largely unconvincing manner. Perhaps this is related to this feature being developed out of a short film featuring the same character? Still, it’s a unique little item, and who knew there was such as thing as Moroccan punk – even if it’s every bit as shitty as much of the Western variety!

Dir: Sean Gullette
Star: Chaimae Ben Acha, Soufia Issami, Driss Roukhe, Mourade Zeguendi