Film Shapes

Elyas Flores is a French army veteran, back from a spell in Afghanistan, which has mentally shafted him (we find out later what exactly happened). He's staying in a kind of monitored apartment block but does a runner when his care worker upbraids him for not taking his medicine. A job offer appears at just the right time.  His north African background is a plus in that he's asked to be a bodyguard for a middle eastern millionaire and his family. It doesn't take long for suspicions to arise, or are these all due to Elyas's paranoia? This is clearly the best section of the film. He sees the other security guys handling earrings that went missing earlier. The young child of the family rides her bike out of the mansion grounds and Elyas spots a pair of wronguns on a motorbike. He watches things on the house monitors that don't look legit to him.  But we're soon doubting the veracity of events, even though we've seen them play out. We've become the 'unrel...

It's an opportune time for this film to land, what with attacks on journalists filling the news cycle in recent days. The correspondent in question is Australian Peter Greste, who was arrested in Cairo at the end of 2013 while working for Al Jazeera. Potted history - the leaders of the military coup that ousted Mohamed Morsi want Al Jazeera brought to heel and so they accuse Greste and his crew of being agents for the Muslim Brotherhood, a party affiliated with Morsi. The story plays out as a dissection of the kangaroo court that tried the three men, while also couching Greste's ordeal as a possible payback for his part in the death of a colleague years before. The film, directed by Kriv Stenders, is based on Greste's book about his arrest and imprisonment, The First Casualty , and there's also a credit for Greste as a story consultant, so I think it's safe to assume everything on screen has had final approval from the man himself. It's all held together admirab...