Let's get the good things out of the way first: the cinematography is brilliant. You can tell the young directors have definitely improved in their technical abilities and are putting their budget to good use. We as a viewer get the feeling we're looking at a real Hollywood film instead of a local production, something very little Belgian directors have succeeded in.
However, these whistles and bells alone fail to make this a captivating film. The main issue is that it's missing direction. It's too much at once and nothing is really explored in depth or fleshed out well. The main problem for me here is that it fails establish any connection between the viewer and the characters, which makes it a chore to finish a movie you're not engaged in.
The plot of the movie revolves around a family of three: A Belgian-Moroccan mother and her two sons. The oldest of which, Kamal, travels to Syria to help the local populace and oppose the Assad-regime. His motivation to do so is shotty at best: he was a popular local figure and artist in Brussels and everything seemed to be going his way, which makes the decision to go to Syria after a near-arrest by the police and exposure to one news emmision on Syria quite sudden and unconvincing. His switch from a selfish figure to someone who risks everything for others is not explored well and this causes an immediate disconnect with the main character, who for the rest of the movie just acts as an empty vessel to show how bad ISIS is (as if the viewer was not aware this well-covered and revered extremist organisation was bad!).
The second storyline revolves around Kamal's 12 year old brother, who's slowly brainwashed by local influential figures and ends up joining the ISIS youth department. This plot works better than Kamal's one, since there's more build up and we get a glimpse on how the ISIS recruitment system works and more specifically we see how the system shows little interest in these "lost causes" and victim-blames the mother. However, the kid (played by director Adil's younger brother) is not really convincing in carrying this heavy storyline and the plot drags on for wayyyyyy too long too. Instead of ending on a gutwrenching cliffhanger where we see him leaving for Syria, we have to sit through his military training and see him eventually kill his older brother. This kills all the suspense and is only included to show how bad ISIS really is (yeah we know, everyone knows this!).
The final plotline tells the story of a mother struggling with the radicalisation of her youngest son. The mother, played by Lubna Azabal, is one of the few convincing characters in this movie. She perfectly captures the helplessness of a mother who's losing her children and can barely do anything about it. She's victim-blamed by her surroundings and even the public services. Sadly, this plotline drags on well after it's expiration date, the viewer is forced to watch the mother travel to Syria and find her youngest son. This makes for a tedious and anticlimactic end of the movie, that had lots of people at the theater sighing and looking at their watches. As mentioned before: ending the story at the point where the young son abandons his desperate mother for Syria, would have left a much stronger impression...
Some final annoyances:
A very disappointing and tedious watch by Adil & Bilal, who really have to stick to simple action flicks and stay away from more serious topics...
However, these whistles and bells alone fail to make this a captivating film. The main issue is that it's missing direction. It's too much at once and nothing is really explored in depth or fleshed out well. The main problem for me here is that it fails establish any connection between the viewer and the characters, which makes it a chore to finish a movie you're not engaged in.
The plot of the movie revolves around a family of three: A Belgian-Moroccan mother and her two sons. The oldest of which, Kamal, travels to Syria to help the local populace and oppose the Assad-regime. His motivation to do so is shotty at best: he was a popular local figure and artist in Brussels and everything seemed to be going his way, which makes the decision to go to Syria after a near-arrest by the police and exposure to one news emmision on Syria quite sudden and unconvincing. His switch from a selfish figure to someone who risks everything for others is not explored well and this causes an immediate disconnect with the main character, who for the rest of the movie just acts as an empty vessel to show how bad ISIS is (as if the viewer was not aware this well-covered and revered extremist organisation was bad!).
The second storyline revolves around Kamal's 12 year old brother, who's slowly brainwashed by local influential figures and ends up joining the ISIS youth department. This plot works better than Kamal's one, since there's more build up and we get a glimpse on how the ISIS recruitment system works and more specifically we see how the system shows little interest in these "lost causes" and victim-blames the mother. However, the kid (played by director Adil's younger brother) is not really convincing in carrying this heavy storyline and the plot drags on for wayyyyyy too long too. Instead of ending on a gutwrenching cliffhanger where we see him leaving for Syria, we have to sit through his military training and see him eventually kill his older brother. This kills all the suspense and is only included to show how bad ISIS really is (yeah we know, everyone knows this!).
The final plotline tells the story of a mother struggling with the radicalisation of her youngest son. The mother, played by Lubna Azabal, is one of the few convincing characters in this movie. She perfectly captures the helplessness of a mother who's losing her children and can barely do anything about it. She's victim-blamed by her surroundings and even the public services. Sadly, this plotline drags on well after it's expiration date, the viewer is forced to watch the mother travel to Syria and find her youngest son. This makes for a tedious and anticlimactic end of the movie, that had lots of people at the theater sighing and looking at their watches. As mentioned before: ending the story at the point where the young son abandons his desperate mother for Syria, would have left a much stronger impression...
Some final annoyances:
- The constant switching between languages! I see what they were going for here: illustrating the multicultural nature of ISIS and European muslims in general. However, when you have 2 Belgian Moroccans talking to each other, it doesn't make sense that they'd switch between French, Arab and Dutch 3 times in one sentence. A conversation between Kamal and his Belgian ISIS friend somehow contains more language switches than actual words spoken!
- The musical numbers: I was suprised to see the musical aspect of this film but I didn't really mind them. What I did dislike about them, was that they clearly were supposed to carry over some important motivations or strong feelings but they failed terribly to do so. For example, Kamal's decision to move to Syria is supposed to be explained in the movie's first song but this song fails misserably in doing a convincing job, the only message the viewer could take away from it was that Kamal didn't like what he saw on the news, even though the Syrian war or his feelings about it had never been brought up before.
- My biggest annoyance is the fact that this movie failed to bring any new light to the conflict: everyone in Europe know ISIS is bad, their brutal crimes have been shared on the internet & news for the last 12 years! It would have been satisfying to see the other side and get a clear view on the motivations that lead our European youth to participate in the war or to radicalize. Motivations we as a viewer can understand and connect to! In this film, we saw a Belgian criminal, joining a criminal organization and although we're supposed to think he's good at heart and circumstances drove him this far, it rather feels that Kamal is quite dumb and a terrible decision maker. That's why this film fails to clear any stigma about the Islam or the radicalised youth, which is what it was supposed to be going for.
A very disappointing and tedious watch by Adil & Bilal, who really have to stick to simple action flicks and stay away from more serious topics...