‘Seeking Haven For Mr Rambo’: Red Sea Review

Dir: Khaled Mansour. Egypt/Saudi Arabia. 2024. 102 minutes

When tensions boil over between 30-year-old Cairo safety guard Hassan (Essam Omar) and his bullish landlord Karem (Ahmed Bahaa), Hassan’s beloved canine Rambo steps as much as defend his grasp. Nursing a bruised ego and chew marks on his privates, Karem calls for that the canine be handed over. Hassan embarks on an pressing mission to discover a secure place for his canine finest buddy however, within the course of, he rediscovers his personal self-respect. The theme of the bond between canine and emotionally stunted man as a method of private progress is hardly a brand new one. Nonetheless, this function debut from Khaled Mansour impresses, bringing a distinctively gritty flavour to its imaginative and prescient of lives on the fringes of working class Cairo.

A top quality image that asserts Mansour as a notable expertise in Egyptian unbiased filmmaking 

The movie, which screens on the Purple Sea Movie Competition following its premiere in Venice’s Horizons Additional strand, shares some thematic DNA with Guan Hu’s Cannes Un Sure Regard prize-winner Black Canine. Each movies function males of few phrases who discover a releasing kinship with their canine companion. Each unfold in cities which can be within the strategy of change. Each, very appealingly, function canine using in motorbike sidecars (Mr Rambo will get the added bonus of his personal little bike helmet). And whereas Mr Rambo lacks the star energy that propelled Black Canine into arthouse cinemas and awards conversations, it’s a top quality image that asserts Mansour as a notable expertise in Egyptian unbiased filmmaking. Additional competition play, and maybe streaming platform curiosity, appears potential.

Mr Rambo, a leggy, grubby-white mongrel with a quizzical expression, is a beloved pet. The movie opens on Hassan and Rambo having fun with a tussle with the canine’s favorite toy, a stuffed bunny; then we see them cooking collectively (“Fetch the potato sack,” says Hassan. Rambo returns with a hopeful expression and his meals bowl.). Hassan rigorously prepares eggs for the hound. His mom (Samaa Ibrahim) refers to Rambo as “the pampered one” however indulges each the canine and her son.

These moments of doggy domesticity are, we rapidly realise, a quick respite from the precarious uncertainty of their life. Hassan’s mom has consulted a lawyer about the specter of eviction from Karem, who desires to increase the premises of his mechanics enterprise. However Karem, all swagger and menace, will not be the sort of man who appears prone to observe the authorized niceties of the scenario. Hassan, accompanying his mom to a gathering in Karem’s cockroach-riddled storage, sits mute, unable to seek out the phrases to combat their nook.

Phrases elude him as soon as once more, when, following the violent run-in with a drunken Karem, he parks his motorbike and sidecar in a single day and camps outdoors a restaurant the place he previously labored alongside Asmaa (Rakeen Saad). Her enjoyment of seeing him suggests a spark of romantic historical past, however the drama is elegantly underplayed. Mansour will not be the sort of filmmaker to ship a backstory with chunks of exposition, and Hassan is actually not about to reveal his coronary heart. As an alternative, we seize glimpses of craving in Saad’s delicate efficiency and Omar’s stony evasiveness.

Hassan, it turns into clear, is wounded by the abandonment of a father who merely walked out sooner or later, by no means to return. And this deep-rooted emotional scar ties into his reluctance at hand over the canine to an unsure destiny by the hands of his landlord, even when it might safe them somewhat extra time of their modest house. Recordings of happier days, with Hassan as a toddler providing to sing for his father, are a shifting motif all through the second half of the movie, augmenting the sparse however efficient use of music that largely consists of wistful accordion and guitar. Elsewhere, there’s an unpolished rawness to the images that compliments the downbeat realism of the movie’s depiction of Cairo’s nocturnal underbelly.