A Gangster’s Life review – funny in parts, but not always deliberately

Despite some interesting visuals, not even Tony Cook and Jonny Weldon can lift this poorly produced tale of a pair of dodgy lads hiding in Greece from a gangster Here is an odd film about a couple of dodgy lads who get on the wrong side of a bona fide gangster and have to hide out in Greece. It’s not thoughtless per se; rather, it lacks the resources to bring its vision successfully to screen. Its quirks are sometimes appealing and sometimes amateurish and, while a mixture of influences swirl about, from Bond to Kingsman to Guy Ritchie and even Mission: Impossible, the film-makers don’t have the necessary budget, meaning that it feels at times like a TikTok parody of more expensive films. It is a shame, because there are some interesting visual ideas that go beyond route one filming. Example: a goon beating a man tied to a chair on a crispy manicured lawn is filmed in a lovely wide shot, with a guy in the far distance calmly clipping the hedge. But it’s the post-production that is th...

Tomorrow’s Freedom review – does this man know the way to peace in Israel and Palestine?

Sombre documentary focuses on the former Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, and how he is becoming a Mandela-like figure since his imprisonment in 2002

Here is a film that offers something not generally on offer in the media: an envisioning of the future and a road map, or part of a road map, out of the present situation in Israel and Palestine. It’s about Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, an initial supporter of the 1993 and 1995 Oslo peace accords who became progressively disillusioned with the slow choreography of international consensus, and was ultimately imprisoned in 2002 for authorising deadly attacks on Israel. Barghouti’s position is not that he is innocent, but that an Israeli court has no right to try him.

During the long years since, he has gone on hunger strike, been beaten and abused in captivity; his grownup children have themselves been targeted and arrested and his wife Fadwa has been repeatedly refused permission to visit him. But the film shows that something else has been happening as well: the Mandela-isation of Barghouti, a process which the Israeli forces themselves may well come to see as convenient, when in some future time they need an internationally accepted figure with whom to negotiate.

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