Gholam *** (2017, Shahab Hosseini, Nasser Memarzia, Armin Karima) – Movie Review

Good and gritty British Iranian thriller, with an unusual story, a strong central performance by Shahab Hosseini as troubled London cab driver Gholam and striking cinematography that gives a fresh take on a grungy, run-down London the tourists never see.

Director Mitra Tabrizian’s haunting British Iranian thriller is good and gritty, slow-burning but mesmersising, with an unusual story, a very strong, detailed central performance by Shahab Hosseini as troubled London cab driver Gholam and striking cinematography by Dewald Aukema that gives a fresh take on a grungy, run-down London the tourists never see.

A rancid air of gloom, doom and menace hangs over proceedings. It is easy to think of Sweeney Todd; ‘There’s a hole in the world like a great, black pit and its name is London.’ Gholam  might be set in the same hole that Sweeney Todd is set in, well nearby, anyway. The tourists might have taken over Central London but the rest of the city has hardly changed except superficially in 150 years. Its soul is the same – dark!

Gholam is a lonely, haunted 30something Iranian immigrant living very poorly in the East End of London who works as a mechanic at a run-down garage by day and as a cab driver by night. In the two strands of the plot, he seeks to involve himself in the situation of an older woman, a complete stranger who he gives an unsolicited lift to, rather than to join the cause of his fellow countrymen, as he is hounded by men supposedly connected with his past in the Iranian military.

That unusual story is based on an original idea by Tabrizian. Unusual and original it may be, but there are shades of Taxi Driver and Le Samourai in this existential thriller, and of course that is dangerous because these are untouchable classics, but nevertheless Gholam does not disgrace itself.

There are one or two rough edges – the clichéd East End bully boy stereotypes are not nearly as well written or acted as the Iranian characters – but Gholam is still a good and gritty East End thriller.

Shahab Hosseini won the Best Actor award at Cannes for The Salesman (2016), which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year. He shared the Best Actor award at Berlin for A Separation (2011), which won the Golden Berlin Bear, and the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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