On the face of it Law of Tehran is a very simple movie. It’s the story of a cop trying to find a drugs kingpin and what happens when he does. But as well as being a crime thriller, Saeed Roustayi’s second movie also manages to be a nuanced psychological drama, a survey of the Iranian justice system and a critique of the “war on drugs”, with acting at a very high level and film-making of real vision and ability.
A cop searches for Tehran’s current Mr Big of drugs, finds him and locks him in detention awaiting a trial. And then the games begin as the bad guy, Naser Khakzad (Navid Mohammadzadeh) tries to pull strings, intimidate, bribe, persuade, haggle and bluff his way out of detention, using whatever leverage he can against the cops, including dirt – there’s plenty to find.
Payman Maadi plays the cop, Samad Majidi, an officer whose MO is to take any suspect into a room and then threaten to throw the book at them. Since this is Iran, that book is heavy. Selling drugs, for instance, means death at the end of a rope. Majidi’s tactics are tough but they do get results, on drug dealers and family members further down the food chain at any rate. On Khakzad not so much. Not at all in fact.
This is a film that starts with a police raid and ends in the execution yard. These are both brutal, brilliantly directed and eye-popping set pieces. Roustayi periodically reminds us that he has those tricks up his sleeve, dropping in a vivid image here, a remarkable moment there as seasoning in what is otherwise a discursive and exploratory drama.
Khakzad and Majidi circle each other. On the one hand two guys shadow boxing. On the other a portrait of a justice system on its knees, processing huge numbers of people in appalling conditions. Crowd control rather than the dispassionate application of the law.
The details are potent. The mobile phone Khakzad gets off an inmate who regularly smuggles them in. Why does it smell like shit, asks Khakzad. He learns how it is smuggled in. Or the crippled man who has been caught selling drugs and is now persuading his son, maybe ten years old, to take the rap and go to prison – what a great performance by both Asghar Piran as the father and an absolutely astonishing one by Yusef Khosravi as his son. Prepare for heartbreak.
There are odd moments of comedy, of an abject sort, borne out of the chaos of the system that’s either falling apart or is functioning exactly as it’s meant to – depending on your view – like when Majidi is suddenly accused by Khakzad of having stolen some of his heroin, and Majidi’s fellow cop, Hamid (Houman Kiai), doesn’t just not back him up but implicates Majidi further. There is needle here.
Maadi and Mohammadzadeh both also appeared in Roustayi’s feature debut, 2016’s Life and a Day, and they work almost as a double act their performances are so well matched. In Majidi and Khakzad we have two smart guys who have been around the block a few times locked in a struggle for superiority. The good guy and the bad guy, though that’s also something Roustayi has a little tug at.
It is a grim drama, in many ways, but the storytelling is exhilarating and the acting is superb. Towards the end cop Majidi laments that when he became a cop there were 1 million drug addicts. Now there are 6.5 million (6.5 or Just 6.5 are two of this film’s various alternative titles). The drugs policy in Iran clearly does not work. This film, though, does.
Law of Tehran – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
