Who are you going to believe?

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2023

#24 :  متری شیش و نیم (Law Of Tehran)

A barnstorming – and ultimately gruesome – opening sequence sets the grisly action-packed tone of this ferocious Michael Mann-style thriller of the Iranian underworld.

Our third Iranian film and I was really struggling to find this one but kept looking because I thought I'd enjoy it. Interestingly, it's also known as Just 6.5 or 6.5 Per Meter, so that really didn't make searching for it any easier, but in the end I found it on Plex - which makes this the first film I've found there. And I'm looking forward to the "barnstorming - and ultimately gruesome - opening sequence"!

Yeah, it is quite the opening sequence and it doesn't end as I (or I suspect, anyone) expected. The film follows Samad (Payman Maadi) who is a narcotics detective on the trail of a drug lord who, when we start the film may not even exist, but is eventually discovered to be Naser Khakzad (Navid Mohammadzadeh). The man himself takes quite some tracking down though and it makes quite an interesting tale...

...but I found myself thinking they'd really have to stretch things out to make it last the entire film - but they don't try to because Samad gets his man about halfway through and we then follow Naser through "the system" (as much as one exists). In a lot of ways, it's two separate films plot-wise but they link together well and they don't always go where you're expecting them to, with the lines between good and bad being nicely blurred throughout the film. And that's all I'm going to tell you about it - but I will say it's a very well written film, which poses some interesting philosophical questions.

Payman and Navid are both great in this - they play cat and mouse well with their roles often changing. Also of note are Farhad Aslani as a nicely officious judge and Houman Kiai as Hamid, who is another detective who has a somewhat fractious relationship with Samad. I knew I recognised Payman from somewhere, but couldn't remember where - Wikipedia suggests it's probably from 13 Hours, 6 Underground or Westworld, but I've no idea which.

As well as being well written, it's also well shot - there are a surprising number of locations and an even surprising-er number of extras. I suspect that Iranian prisons are somewhat overcrowded and this film certainly reinforces that notion with a load of people involved in some shots (and also all naked at one point). The camerawork involved in these shots must have required an awful lot of planning and it all looks very good.

For once, The Guardian didn't disappoint with their level of hype - their description had built my hopes up but previous experience suggested I was going to end up disappointed, so I was pleased not to. My only complaint would be the amount of advertising that Plex shows - at the beginning it was playing 2.5 minutes of ads every ten minutes, but it did calm down a bit as the film progressed. That's obviously nothing to do with the film though and I was pleased I was able to find it somewhere, and doubly so when it turned out to be such a good all round effort - it was all very enjoyable and it's a strong recommendation if you can face the adverts.

#25 - I wasn't expecting quite so much dancing in a dance film