Simply A Masterpiece

Absolutely Fantastic

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Blistering performances.

Mona (Aiysha Hart) is a westernized Pakistani living in England. Her relationship with her boyfriend, as well as her westernized ways have dishonored the family. In the first few minutes of the film, she is killed and placed in a trunk. We then flash back to the events leading up to her demise.An Aryan Brotherhood hitman (Paddy Considine) is hired to find and return her in the flashback. His normal job is to kill dishonored Muslim women, working for the community of Muslims while all the while hating them. About 50 minutes into the film we are back to where we started. There was no good reason for the flashback other than to confuse us and to tease us with some action in this slow action drama.The film is a bit dry and formulaic. F-bomb. Brief implied sex. No nudity.

This is a tricky movie to review, it's a little all over the place at times and while occasionally it gets interesting it as often is rather boring.And that has to do partly with the fact that pretty much everyone except for the victim are disgusting human beings and it focuses more on them than it does the only sympathetic character in the movie, and they aren't that fleshed out characters either to make up for it.Paddy Considine is all over the poster but for the first hour he merely shows up here and there and it often made me wonder what his characters purpose even was, he ended up serving a purpose in the end though but yeah he's definitely not a lead character for the first hour that's for sure and clearly only on the poster to attract viewers.I'm conflicted about the movie regarding it's subject, on one hand I do think that it's important to bring up cause honour killings do occur all over the world.It's just the way it was dealt with that didn't sit right with me, cause they simplified it all and it almost felt like it was suggesting that any Muslim can turn into a vicious killer at any moment because of their pride, and other Muslims accept it which is an idea that the right-wing media is already trying to sell to the world causing racism and this movie will surely not help to prevent that from happening.Not saying that you should hide away from subjects just for fear of such things but yeah it made it all seem so simple to what is a very complicated issue, it needed to be handled in a much more delicate manner, and perhaps it would have helped if there were any decent people in it beyond the victim to show that not everyone is like this.

The editing and structure of the film is confusing, the characters without depth or development, certain crucial incidents are contrived and unbelievable. The opportunity to show the real horror and wickedness of so-called 'honour' murders is lost except for short scenes such as the mother encouraging or bullying her sons to betray and kill their sister. When one considers the brutal murder of a real defenceless girl by her parents on a settee in their home around 2000, with the rest of the siblings watching and only one of them brave enough to tell the truth years later, this kind of film trivialises the sheer nightmare immorality of such parents and such homes. Those killers were eventually sentenced to life in jail after the police doggedly pursued their conviction. That is a dramatic enough story to tell without bounty hunters, clichéd rooftop scenes, and hypocritical thugs with foul minds and foul mouths attending prayers and pretending to uphold the law.As for the original reviewer of this film, the Muslim person who wrote it should be ashamed of the predictable 'moral message' he managed to drag out of it, which seems to be that girls should do exactly what their families want and have no minds, thoughts or feelings of their own. Here's an idea that might not have occurred to him: if you move to a culture that is alien to your own degraded one and cannot handle it, go back to where you really belong and live happily there. Don't bring sickening, perverted ideas of murdering children to save some ridiculous idea of 'honour' to a country that believes in the right to freedom of thought, speech and action under the law.

I am going to keep this short. This movie paints an extremely unrealistic and ignorant view of British Asian culture, especially British Pakistani culture. None of the characters have any real depth, there are copious amounts of foul language thrown about with no real thought to context. I was also very confused by the order in which the scenes were presented to the viewer, half the time it made no sense at all.Lastly I would like to point out that as a British Pakistani, I was offended by this movie. I believe the topic of honour killings is a very relevant and serious one and if a director/writer wants to tackle that subject, it should be done so with respect and consideration.