We’ve watched a fair few Iranian films so far and all of them are essentially arthouse drama films. This one by a heretofore relatively unknown director Saeed Roustayi about the police chasing after a drug dealer seems at first to be a more commercial movie. But it turns out that the Iranians treat even a crime thriller more seriously than most and takes care to present events from the perspective of the drug dealer. I think that in end, it still toes the Iranian government’s line on drugs but it’s tone and the turns it takes makes it feel different in some surprising ways.
Samad is a police detective who leads an anti-drugs team in Tehran. They crack down on a den of drug addicts and especially a massive shantytown, hauling everyone back to the station. The information they gather leads them to the house of a street-level drugs distributor. The film meticulously shows every step of the process as Samad and his team piece together the clues and the chain of drug sellers that finally lead them to the kingpin Naser. A large, heavily-armed team is sent to apprehend him but they find him alone by himself in a luxurious penthouse, unconscious in the pool due to a drug overdose. Samad has him revived and that is still just the beginning of their quest for justice as Samad must still prove his case to the judge while Nasser attempts to bribe everyone that he can with massive sums of money to let him go while also working his underworld connections.
We’ve all watched plenty of movies about the police versus drug gangs and I think this has shaped our expectations of the genre, especially by films about gangs in Central and South America. That’s probably why this film feels so odd to me as it’s attitude is completely different. Here the police are actually competent and relatively honest but still overwhelmed due to the sheer scale of the drugs epidemic. The film seems to want to show how they are being back by having to diligently comply with legal procedures and how they themselves are constantly under supervision to watch out for corruption. There are no gunfights in the film at all and Naser himself seems horrified at the suggestion that he might resort to violence. In his view, he sells drugs because there’s a market for it and he makes plenty of money doing it. This money then goes to his family because it’s so hard otherwise to make a living in Iran and he’s happy to share some of it with the cops too because he’s not interested in picking a fight at all. Samad however points out that the cost of he and his family living in luxury is untold numbers of Iranians living in drugged out destitution and turning on each other to survive. This is still a cynical film but in a way that is marked different from what we’re used to.
On a technical level, this is certainly a well-made film but I especially appreciated how it shows sides of Iran we otherwise rarely see. The squalor of the shantytown made up of concrete pipes and random bit of construction material is so shocking that it is kind of surprising the Iranian government even allowed it to be shown. From what I read most of the extras really are drug addicts they picked up on the streets. At the other end of the spectrum, we also see a level of luxury in the form of the penthouse complete with concierge service that we don’t usually associate with Iran. It is also fascinating to watch how the Iranian justice system works in such detail. Clearly they believe that this is a fair system but it is shocking to us how quickly the cases go to trial and how the judge issues orders immediately and there are no lawyers involved at all. In any case, this makes for a very complete and no holds barred picture of a drug case in Iran beginning from the initial rounding up of addicts to the punishment of the kingpin.
It’s obvious that this film was made as a response to the drug problem that Iran is still experiencing and the director is very clear that it is a problem even if Nasser claims that he is just a businessman fulfilling a demand in the market. I find Nasser’s character somewhat unbelievable and overly sympathetic as it’s difficult to imagine him being able to amass that much drug wealth without having to engage in some violence sometimes. Similarly the real Iran probably has more problems with police corruption than what this film shows. All the same, while this is not exactly a story that is emotionally moving to me, it is a surprisingly honest and informative take on a major problem in Iranian society and that makes it very much worth watching.