Honour
Director: Shan Khan
Writer: Shan Khan
Cast: Aiysha Hart, Paddy Considine, Faraz Ayub, Shubham Saraf, Harvey Virdi, Nikesh Patel
[Screener Review.]

Plot:
Mona (Aiysha Hart) comes from a Pakistani background but her family has been living in England for a while now. When she falls in love with Tanvir (Nilesh Patel) whose family originally comes from India, her mother (Harvey Virdi) decides that an honor killing is the only way to solve the problem. But Mona manages to escape, so her mother and her brother Kasim (Faraz Ayub) hire Bounty (Paddy Considine), a grumpy racist bounty hunter, to find her.

Honour could have been a good film but unfortunately it lacks subtlety. Instead of seriously engaging with the subject matter it chose, it would rather rehash stereotypes. Plus, the entire film is surprisingly much about the men.

Honor killings are a serious topic and one that the “West” likes to push as far “East” as they can to pretend it would never happen here. Fact is, it does. And it doesn’t only happen in Muslim communities, either (only when a Christian does it, it’s not called an honor killing). Anyway, it’s a topic worthy of much discussion.

But this film, unfortunately, misses the discussion by a rather wide margin. Instead of examining the issue sensibly, what we get is a mother and brother who are about as human as your average horror movie villain (hot damn, would I love to see Harvey Virdi as a horror movie villain – she was awesome), a racist 50s-hard-boiled-PI bounty hunter who has a change of heart at the last minute (unfortunately, we don’t get to see how his character evolves: rather it’s one way one moment and entirely different the next) and an ending that’s about as realistic as the ending of Leon the Professional (love that film and that ending fits there. It doesn’t fit here).

But the worst thing about it was it’s a film about how horrible Honor killings are – for the men. Kasim is pressured by his mother into fulfilling his role as avenger of his sister’s virginity (though it seriously doesn’t take much pressure). His little brother Adel (Shubham Saraf) would like to be supportive of his sister, but tradition doesn’t let him. Tanvir doesn’t know what to do either, though he tries to do what’s best for Mona. And Bounty cries himself to sleep, basically, over the time he found a pregnant girl for her family and let them kill her. What’s missing in all of this is Mona’s suffering (or that pregnant girl we never even learn the name of). Whenever her predicament gets worse, we see it from a distance, through the eyes of somebody else. She also doesn’t get any personality whatsoever. She’s just the trigger for the men’s pain.

If they had gone for a bit more subtlety in the film, had allowed for a little more complexity, we could have gotten the film I was hoping for. Instead it ends in one cliche after the other.

Summarizing: Eh. Maybe watch it for Harvey Virdi and Paddy Considine but not for the subject matter.