Hani Mustafa finds Tito does not quite cut its suit according to the cloth Egypt's cinema industry may be the Arab world's largest -- before the hiatus of the 90s average annual production would regularly reach 70 films -- but one should not, despite Cairo having been labelled the Hollywood of the East, think for a moment that market conditions are remotely comparable to those in the US. Which, given the predilection of many Egyptian directors to adopt American techniques, leads to problems, most obvious when the model that is being aped is the big-budget Hollywood action film. And the reasons are simple: local box-office returns will never generate the money Hollywood lavishes on its action flicks. Tarek El-Erian is best known as a director of advertisements. He is a disciple of American film techniques: in light social comedies such as Al-Sillem wa Al-Teiban (Snakes and Ladders) , or action films like Al-Embratour (The Emperor), adapted from Scarface, the influence is clear. El-Erian's advertising nous was undoubtedly helpful in securing funding via product placement: Tito, his current release, uses the billboard of a multinational mail delivery company as the background for a scene that takes place on a rooftop, a far from fortuitous coincidence since it generated the cash to allow him to multiply the number of scenes containing explosions or shooting, as well as allowing for the hire of foreign stunt experts. Tito opens with the words Cairo 1985 on the screen. Twelve-year-old Tito is involved in the mugging of a woman as she walks out of a jewellers. The incident ends with Tito killing a policeman and as a result being admitted to a correctional facility for young offenders. The most violent scene in the film occurs in the centre when an older boy assaults Tito as he is washing his clothes. Tito fights back, fatally biting the older boy in the neck. The result is a great deal of blood, and more than a hint of vampirism, enough, one might suppose, to have restricted the film to an adult audience, though this is not the case. Fast forward to the now adult Tito (Ahmed El-Saqa) walking out of the correctional facility. Predictably, he soon returns to a life of crime, though scriptwriter Mohamed Hefzy and director Tarek El-Erian maintain a level of ambiguity appropriate to detective dramas. We see a gang, of which Tito is a member, entering a room from which they intend to steal something before the arrival of the room's occupant and his bodyguards. The incident results in a massacre in which several policemen and all the gang members, except Tito, are killed. Our erstwhile hero then escapes after a long American- style chase in which several cars are wrecked and which ends when Tito jumps off Qasr Al-Nil Bridge and into the Nile. The police stand on the bridge looking helpless. We later find out that the theft-turned-massacre was set up by a corrupt police officer, Rifaat El-Sokary (Khaled Saleh), known to Tito as Ramzy. Saleh turns in the film's most convincing performance. Cooperation between Tito and the officer follows a set pattern. Information about a police bust is leaked to Tito who then beats the police to the scene of the crime and runs off with the booty before they arrive Explosions, a great deal of shooting, much blood and people running all over the place: El-Erian seeks to pack in as much action and violence as possible, whatever the cost in dramatic credibility. Tito and Ramzy's final collaboration involves an attack on a drug dealer. Ramzy, now suspected by a colleague and under observation, insists the operation go off without anyone being killed. It results, though, in the deaths of the entire drug gang and the most extravagant chase of the film, which involves the blowing up of a Mercedes and the wrecking of a Cherokee jeep. Supplementing the action scenes are a series of complicated relationships. There is Ramzy's manipulation of Tito, sometimes presented as friendship, as when they hunt for ducks together, sometimes as a form of patronage -- Tito at one point tries to please his patron by giving him three guns -- but which eventually turns into profound animosity when Tito refuses to murder the officer investigating Ramzy's corruption. Tito also has links to more respectable society, through his friendship and then partnership with the businessman Hisham (Amr Waked). Hisham's dream of a restaurant on the banks of the Nile is effectively scuppered by Ramzy who has now turned against Tito. Then there is the inevitable love interest, Nour (Hanan Turk), one of Hisham's friends who works with disabled children and who becomes part of Tito's dream of a family. There is, too, Rida, the street child whom Tito is determined to save from life on the street. It is this relationship that purports to explain Tito's own sorry fate: he was, too, a homeless street child. Tito, with the help of Nour, plans an alternative family for Rida. Tito is not, of course, a real criminal. He only steals from thieves, arms and drug dealers, which strategy makes his actions more palatable. El-Erian also ends his film -- as he did Al- Embratour -- with a confrontation between the hero and his enemies, in Tito's case the policemen who, under the instructions of Ramzy, are tracking him. Tito inevitably recalls a much earlier film, Gaalouni Mogreman (They Made me a Criminal), in which the hero, played by Farid Shawki, is placed by his uncle in a correctional facility. "I have only one reply to everything you have done to me," says the hero of Atef Salem's 1954 film. He then takes out his gun and shoots his uncle. The film -- part of a programmatic attempt to discredit the aristocracy by the then regime -- was produced according to clear directives. In both Tito and Gaalouni Mogreman Oliver Twist-like figures fall into a life of crime. In the older film, however, crime is a series of petty thefts that ends with the bullet the hero fires at his uncle. Both heroes are homeless street children, but while the earlier film had a clear -- if somewhat propagandistic -- point to make, the later film takes a far more ambiguous stand on the descent into crime. Both films end with revenge killings -- the older hero exacts his revenge by shooting his uncle, while Tito is eventually killed by his corrupt one-time accomplice, Ramzy. Times change, and in Tito it is corruption that triumphs. And if, along the way, any dramatic logic is jettisoned, well, that is just the kind of collateral damage that is an inevitable casualty in the pursuit of high-octane, violence-fuelled action flick.
