Hani Mustafa questions an instance of the drive to break the comic monopoly By offering entertaining, moving or -- well, sometimes -- powerful films, production companies endeavour to draw in as large an audience as possible: a drive that becomes frenzied during the high (Eid) seasons. Cinematic marketing rule number one: many more people are willing to go to the cinema during Eid, and those who are -- often young people seeking a maximum of fun during the holidays or children eager to spend their special Eid allowances -- will likely go more than once, to more than one movie theatre, and occupy the most expensive seats. The marriage of Eid to the movies has been in place for a long time, and the rule has yet to be broken or proven wrong. And the drive to produce rests on this periodic boom, which in turn involves the assumption that the audience is more interested in amusement than depth. That would be cinematic marketing rule number two: that Eid films cannot be too serious; no one knows for sure how this came to be, but everyone knows that Eid movie-goers are an altogether different bunch from movie-goers all year round. A huge number of comedies are therefore screened during Eid, comedy being one of the more rough and ready formulations for shallow entertainment of immediate appeal. Yet this year, thrillers made up a worthy competitor in this regard. In the Little Eid there was Tumn Dastet Ashrar (One Eighth a Dozen of Scoundrels), and in the last, Big Eid: Sandra's Al-Rahinah (The Hostage) -- a thriller presented in the framework of an action flick. The film is set in the Ukraine. It opens with Elena (Nur) playing the violin along with a large orchestra in what appears to be an important Kiev theatre. After she receives a phone call, the scene shifts with astounding abruptness: Elena is at the top of a high-rise with a gun, and she is about to assassinate a man in military uniform; the viewer will know by now that he is the head of an African state. In this scene, and perhaps throughout the duration of the film, Sandra is eager to display an excess of craftsmanship with a view to emphasising the meaning of the drama she is presenting. In that abrupt shift, the depth of Elena's cunningness is revealed: a violinist, she is equally convincingly a sniper. Yet the story, written by Nabil Farouk -- the man behind the ubiquitous adolescent novel series Rajul Al-Mustahil (Impossible Man) -- also makes room for an archetypal unemployed Egyptian young man, Mustafa (Ahmed Ezz) who seeks his fortunes illegally abroad, travelling on a tourist visa and staying on regardless of his legal status. Mustafa's first appearance, in economy class on his way to Kiev, flanked by an obese young man and a similarly obese young woman, is a somewhat shoddy scene, but there is a pleasant scene in this opening sequence. Inexplicably moving to a first-class seat, Mustafa meets Dr Makram (Salah Abdalla) and reveals an endearing combination of grassroots chivalry and ignorant ingenuousness. This is, in a nutshell, the character of Mustafa -- the naiveté especially was intensified, apparently in a bid to invest the action with a comic touch after all. Here too the conventional Egyptian (anti)hero capable of joking even at the worst moments has some degree of leeway -- something that extends the scope of comedy in the film. The idea is to compete with comedy by presenting comic action, a not unprecedented idea in the Eid genre. Thus the film combines a series of dramatic lines. On the one hand Mustafa is looking for a job, with the help of his friend Emad (Mohamed Sharaf), who emigrated to the Ukraine several years ago and has since sent his family and friends letter in which he claimed to have become a successful businessman with many a project to his name. This in itself presents a comic opportunity, since, as Mustafa now discovers, Emad is but a street peddler selling Pharaonic souvenirs on the pavement -- just like any African immigrant in any European city, subject to being stopped and arrested for lack of official status. Among the more disturbing details discovered by Mustafa in his first week in Kiev is the fact that, along with a large number of Egyptian young men, Emad sleeps in a single, dreary room. On the other hand there is the story of the kidnap of a physics Nobel laureate by the group of outlaws headed by Elena, which claims that it is an Islamist group: this dramatic line develops in an unconvincing and chaotic way, partly through the screening of a video in which hostages are executed somewhat reminiscent of recent footage from Iraq. It remains unclear till the end of the film who is behind the kidnap or killing of the scientist, or why it is necessary; only later do we realise, through the video screening, that the unidentified Islamists killed him because he was Christian -- something that acts to weaken the plot. The plot is weakened beyond redemption when Elena's group decides that, rather than killing the physicist, they would rather set off an explosion in a disused nuclear facility very like Chernobyl. What is laughable about this scene is that the audience is expected to believe that a small, unequipped group of terrorists led by the scientist could single- handedly refurbish an entire nuclear reactor. Except for one scene at the beginning, in which the Egyptians undertake group prayers with Mustafa as the imam, the script avoids any reference to the religious identity of any of the characters. In that scene an interesting conversation takes place in which one person asks another why he is not praying with the rest -- and the other points to the tattoo of a cross inside his wrist and asks his interlocutor why he is not seeing it. This was the only explicit reference to religion, perhaps a way of emphasising national unity, for here is a group of Egyptians in harmony regardless of religion. Only after the physicist is killed do we realise that both Emad and their computing prodigy friend Kalawi (Maged El-Kidwani) are both Christian. As is evident the film rather lacks a female element except for Elena, who is presented as pure evil. The only other gesture in the direction of woman is the presence of a bold female correspondent (Yasmine Abdel-Aziz) who plays absolutely no part in the drama but whose importance derives, rather, from her being an attractive aspect of the entertainment -- a necessary spice in the Eid film soup. Kalawi remains the best drawn character, even despite the limited time he appears on screen. A simple technician, he is nonetheless able to break the code of Dr Makram's PC and in this sense facilitates Mustafa's meeting with the correspondent. He claims that he has kidney ( kalawi ) failure, and that he requires expensive dialysis on a regular basis -- a way of securing a small income from expatriate Arab businessmen eager to do good. Both comedy and action are rather more cerebral than emotional, as is the case with tragedy or romance, but in this film neither element is thought out sufficiently to be effective; lacking rationality or sense, the cerebral element of comedy fails, and so does that of the thriller, which depends on a powerful and credible plot. The result is that, in the final analysis, the film fails to compete effectively with comedy. What is important to note is that this is not the fault of the genre but rather that of many particular films -- including this one. Hence the importance of critiquing such films, which are too often apologised for because they are less frequent or that they propose to break the comic monopoly on the Eid season.
