Criticism of ‘The law of Tehran’, an Iranian police

In these trapisondic and catastrophic twenties, the name of David Simon seems definitively linked, by a mysteriously unanimous consent, to the renewal of a genre as complex as it is prone to repetition, such as the police. Journalist, writer and later, showrunnerSimon created the iconic and immortal ‘The wire’ (2002-2008), a series that surprised locals and strangers alike for its mix of genre tropes and the documentary approach, resulting in a hybrid that combined ambition, complexity and addictive character, which first made a dent in the demanding public and then reached the majority. The synergies between cinema and television did the rest and today, twenty years after its premiere, it is a mandatory reference to understand the evolution of the genre and, therefore, of cinema and television themselves. What one did not expect is to find a film so indebted to the mold/model Simon from a country like Iran, which continues to produce valuable cinema against all odds, but which tends to frequent reflective work and art and essay, on the one hand, and to the artifact of combative and urgent denunciation, on the other. ‘Tehran law’ It is surprising because it is a 100% genre film, although it has both authorial personality and the social whiplash that have almost always accompanied the criminal thriller to a greater or lesser extent..

not without my drug

Saeed Roustayi’s film stands on an austere, dry style, without concessions to the viewer, sometimes with an annoying tendency to prolong situations, but which, essentially, is characterized by a claustrophobic and seminal approach to the geopolitical ecosystem of the police, in a work that takes place almost entirely in prisons, police stations and offices. His characters seem to have no feelings, not even that spleen vital so typical of polar French: time is short, his only concern is to complete the case, this time, the capture of a drug trafficker. It is a documentary approach whose origins, apart from Simon, can be traced in American titles as arid and forceful as ‘The New Centurions’ (Fleischer, 1972) or ‘Apache District: The Bronx’ (Petrie, 1981). Also, of course, due to the very circumstances of a country like Iran and the social concomitants that reverberate in the plot, one would cite the sociopolitical itch of recent works of European cinema: the French ‘Les miserables’ (Ladj Ly, 2019) or the Danish ‘Shorta, the weight of the law’ (Hviid and Olhom, 2020), pointing out that ‘Tehran’s law’ has its own very well-defined characteristics that are difficult to compare.

After a succession of clues and interrogations conveyed by a convincing and progressive tension that extends until almost the hour of footage, ‘La ley de Tehrán’ he gets into a shirt of eleven yards with a second half of oriental remnants, supported by the interpretive duel of two titans who fulfill more than enough: a stony Payman Maadi and a charismatic Navid Mohammadzadeh. The film gains in spectacularity but loses in solidity and coherence and, incidentally, introduces some accessory subplots that do nothing more than inflate the already generous duration. Despite the aforementioned tendency to excess and clutter, the whole leaves the feeling of a job well done and a duty fulfilled.

For those who know that whoever made the law cheated

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DATA SHEET

Address: Saeed Roustayi Distribution: Navid Mohammadzadeh, Peyman Moaadi, Parinaz Izadyar, Farhad Aslani Country: Iran Year: 2019 Release date: 06-24-2022 Gender: thriller Script: Saeed Roustayi Duration: 135 minutes

Synopsis: In Iran, the penalty for drug possession is the same whether you carry 30g or 50kg: the death penalty. Under these conditions, drug traffickers have no qualms about playing big and crack sales have skyrocketed. As a result, 6.5 million people are drug addicts.