![]() ![]() ![]() Reviewsįocuses helpfully on an uncomfortable and generally overlooked fact – that in recent years border control regimes have become increasingly and often horrifically militarised in many parts of the world. With the growth of borders and resource enclosures, the deaths of migrants in search of a better life are intimately connected to climate change, environmental degradation, and the growth of global wealth inequality. While the poor are restricted by the lottery of birth to slum dwellings in the aftershocks of decolonization, the wealthy travel without constraint, exploiting pools of cheap labor and lax environmental regulations. In Violent Borders, Jones crosses the migrant trails of the world, documenting the billions of dollars spent on border security projects and their dire consequences for countless millions. “We may live in an era of globalization,” he writes, “but much of the world is increasingly focused on limiting the free movement of people.” Reece Jones argues that these deaths are not exceptional, but rather the result of state attempts to contain populations and control access to resources and opportunities. The end result doesn’t do justice to some good performances, led by Abaza’s engaging portrayal of someone who’d rather be doing anything, other than running a kebab shop.Forty thousand people died trying to cross international borders in the past decade, with the high-profile deaths along the shores of Europe only accounting for half of the grisly total. If the script had continued with these aspects of social satire (which you could argue were there in Sweeney Todd as well), I’d have been much happier, but it doesn’t seem as if Pringle could figure out where the script should go. It’s a shame, since the first half is a darkly comic hoot, skewering both the laddish boozing (carried out by both sexes), and the tacit compliance of those who cater to it – in forms both literal and metaphorical. Eventually, you get to where you know it’s been heading, all along, and even this is a bit underwhelming. ![]() It doesn’t work, and the two-hour running time feels increasingly like a terrible mistake as well: the second is much more filler than killer, like a late-night doner which turns out to be all salad and no meat. The script flails around for a bit, trying to recapture its energy, by bringing in new characters, like local hotel manager Sarah (Atherton) or apprentice kebabber Malik (Noi). Hard to argue, in some ways, when you watch the footage of inebriated low-lives with which this is peppered.īut then the film inexplicably leaps six years forward – not that Salah appears to have aged a day – and all momentum is lost, while the viewer wonders what the hell went on in the intervening time. The movie seems to feel he’s performing a service to society, by turning all these wastes of space into delicious late-night snacks. For Salah is the very antithesis of what you’d expect: a well-educated, mild-mannered young man, appalled at what he sees around him. There’s sleazy reality star Jason Brown (Williams), intent on opening ever bigger, brasher drink emporia, who stands in stark contrast to our “hero”. This modern-day updating of Sweeney Todd – writer-director Pringle directly referenced it in his Kickstarter campaign – has a lot of potential. What’s a hard-up, kebab shop owner to do? Salah tries to keep things going, but the debts accumulate, until another unfortunate accident leaves him with a corpse in need of disposal. During an altercation with one such group, Dad is killed, and the local cops are largely disinterested. There, Salah (Abaza) comes home from his political studies course to help his Dad run the local kebab shop, which is plagued by drunken assholes. This starts off really well, with a grimly hellish – yet, likely, accurate – portrayal of binge drinking culture in a British seaside town. Mind you, I’ve rarely seen a film run out of steam so suddenly. ![]() Glad I hadn’t seen this movie, which will do for the doner what Jaws did for ocean swimming. On the way home from the pub, or after a night out, there was a kebab shop just around the corner from Tulse Hill train station, and I was a regular there for a doner with chili sauce. Star: Ziad Abaza, Kristin Atherton, Reece Noi, Scot Williamsīack in my London days, the late-night kebab used to be a staple. ![]()
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