A Hero (Ghahreman) (2021)

Director Asghar Farhadi. Cast: Amir Jadidi, Mohsen Tanabandeh, Sahar Goldust. 127 min. Drama.

• It's happened to Farhadi too. Similar to Tarantino (with The Hateful Eight) and Christopher Nolan (with Tenet), he's overplaying a winning formula. We have his familiar moral dilemmas and the menace of "unintentional" lying, used again here to tell a story, but used several fold to the point of viewer fatigue. Numerous narrative elements kept adding up during the last half hour to the already convoluted (and somewhat disorganized) screenplay, until I finally threw in the towel. I just didn't care anymore.
• A man in prison for a debt he was unable to pay, discovers on leave that his girlfriend has accidentally found a bag of gold coins. Should he use it to pay off his debt, or find the owner and go back to jail? Or in Farhadi style: What would you do? The man makes a decision, and a social media whirlwind ensues. But we're not sure: is he a Good Samaritan ... or just a petty charlatan? The picture is so vague, I'm not sure even Farhadi knows - which of course to some may be considered the film's strength. But as mentioned, I'm suspicious this is becoming Farhadi's ploy to win awards at international festivals. 
• The film also contains my unforgivable cinema pet peeve: tormenting/traumatizing kids, as a cheap way to pull at the viewers heart strings. That's a no-no in my book.
• Jadidi and Tanabandeh work wonders here. The peak is a mid-movie scene where Tanabandeh lays out reasons why the movie's "hero", is anything but - a scene with fast dialogue Farhadi is a career-proven expert at. But when it comes to casting decisions, the movie goes wrong again by choosing Farhadi's daughter for one of the major supporting roles. She's just horrible in the role. Reminds me how Coppola ruined Godfather III by employing Sofia.

MoGo's rating: 5/10

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