A cascading temper of melancholy that fails to ever snap into a correct tragedy, “If You See One thing” could not handle to say all that a lot concerning the persistent post-9/11 biases dealing with refugees from the Center East in the US, however director Oday Rasheed (“Underexposure”) takes an admirable swing along with his newest narrative characteristic, delivering a warm-yet-despondent portrait of a pair pushing their allegiance to its absolute restrict in opposition to the backdrop of a kidnapping scheme they’ll’t ensure is actual.
It begins with Katie (Jess Jacobs) and her boyfriend Ali (Adam Bakri) driving down a busy New York Metropolis avenue as their artist buddy Dawod (Haddi Tabbal) monologues within the backseat. Each Ali and Dawod are from Baghdad, and the latter is remembering a automotive bombing they narrowly missed because of his buddy’s instinct again dwelling. Ali couldn’t have identified he was saving Dawod’s life by not eager to take a flip into visitors that day, however Dawod has by no means forgotten it, and he repeats the story with awe. Feeling indebted to somebody for one thing they did up to now is traditional fairytale fodder, however “If You See One thing” expands that facile concept into a contemporary meditation on taking exhausting actions within the identify of affection, romantic or in any other case.
Co-written by Jacobs and the late Avram Nobel Ludwig, this scrappy indie hits on vital political themes at a crucial time for immigrants in the US. Katie and Ali are deeply dedicated to one another by all accounts, however they’re not getting married to safe Ali a inexperienced card. He’s a health care provider — and never simply “again in Iraq,” as evidenced by the compulsion he feels to carry out unlawful eye surgical procedure on a bit woman in a brand new nation that has but to legitimize his medical experience. Ali is the form of man who does the correct factor even in opposition to his personal curiosity, and watching him endure a tone-deaf interview with an American bureaucrat stings.
“Of my 5 finest associates from childhood, 4 of them are lifeless,” his asylum software reads. Within the room, the U.S. agent insists Ali specify how every individual handed. Air assault. Automotive bomb. Shot by American troopers. Suicide. Juxtaposed with Ali training his personal id aloud earlier than dealing with the stranger who will decide is future (“I’m a health care provider, I’m a health care provider, I’m a health care provider,” he repeats), the scene ought to be recognizable to anybody conversant in the practices of Homeland Safety — simmering injustices and all.
That’s a unprecedented circumstance for relationship, and the prospect of standing by your vital different whereas the federal government decides in the event that they’re “unlawful” might advantage a film all its personal. Artwork curator Katie walks by means of a brutal scene that appears like certainly one of Dawod’s installations bringing the wreckage in Baghdad to life for New Yorkers. However an identical scene later within the movie suggests Ali strolling right into a flashback from his personal life, and Rasheed neatly retains the distant nightmare these characters assume they know and the one unfolding earlier than them in surreal territory.
“He’s not a neighborhood, he lives right here,” Katie spits again at her quietly bigoted household after they ask for Ali’s opinion on a battle from which he’s hundreds of miles eliminated. The second remembers the core dynamic from Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” and Reed Birney’s efficiency because the racist dad has Bradley Whitford written throughout it. However this isn’t a lot a horror film as it’s a trendy fantasy, and the specter of ICE hangs over Ali like an ever-more menacing Sword of Damocles. When the great physician will get phrase that Dawod has been kidnapped again in Baghdad, his dream life with Katie slips away like sand. Dawod’s captors are asking $250,000 for his launch, and Ali doesn’t have that. Katie would possibly.
The position radicalized white girls have performed in terrorism is fertile floor for a movie, however Rasheed takes the other tact right here, portray Katie as an earnest and devoted associate deciding whether or not she will be able to take this leap of religion with Ali. That’s a stable dramatic query, however one that may’ve been extra productive as an inciting incident, as an excessive amount of of this low-budget drama shuffles round topics that demand incisive motion in 2025, successfully making a delicate irony that undermines the movie’s personal level. What’s worse, the appearing doesn’t land the gut-punch you’d hope; Jacobs struggles particularly.
And but “If You See One thing” stays pressing despite its flaws. Rasheed is thought for his guerilla-style filmmaking, and his 2005 docudrama “Underexposure” is broadly credited as the primary characteristic to be shot in Baghdad after the beginning of the Iraq Struggle. At a time when immigrant voices are being diminished within the Western world and the US’ position in shaping worldwide affairs is being essentially reconsidered throughout the globe, the director’s newest movie offers additional — if imperfect — proof of how essential it’s to listen to from the artists whose communities have been most straight impacted by America’s post-9/11 strategy to overseas coverage. Even missing in some respects, this film’s vast launch calls for respect, and it guarantees that resistance to the present administration is percolating throughout us, whether or not we are able to see it at work or not.
Grade: C+
“If You See One thing” is now taking part in in restricted launch, and can open in theaters nationwide on Friday, November 14.
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