A dingy urban landscape mired in systemic police corruption,
venal political set-up, and powerful corporate elites makes up for the right set-up for
a typical gumshoe yarn. Furthermore, include a weary, conscience-stricken police
officer, a femme fatale with a sultry voice, and a brutal murder, you might
just be remembering those glorious monochromatic noir films of the 1940s. But
Swedish director Tarik Saleh in The Nile Hilton Incident (2017) takes all these familiar elements and sets it in
modern Egypt (in 2011) as its frustrated citizens are gearing up for a historic
uprising. Swedish-Lebanese actor Fares Fares (played ‘Assad’ character in the
adaptation of Jussi Adler-Olsen ‘Department Q’ novels) plays the
brooding, doomed, chain-smoking central character, wading through the
atmosphere of iniquity and perfidy with scorn and suppressed wail. He makes
this movie compulsively watchable, despite Saleh’s slightly messy script. Moreover,
the perfectly ingrained cultural specificity enriches the noir/pot-boiler
staples of the narrative.
Righteous anger crackles in Cairo in the weeks leading to
the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. The President Hosni Mubarak’s crooked regime has
provoked hordes of protestors to take up the streets and demand his removal.
Politicians, tycoons, and police try their best to hold on to this life-line of
corruption and unbridled power. In this crumbling situation, a famous pop
singer Lalena is found murdered in the premises of a swanky hotel. The victim’s
face is plastered around the city on billboards and normally this would be a
high-profile case. But the police force remains nonchalant. The chief assigns
the case to Commander Noredin Mostafa (Fares Fares), an unscrupulous detective who
has risen through hierarchy through nepotism. Extracting money for him and his
colleagues is more important than extraditing justice. Degenerate attitude is
the only thing that trickles down from the top.
Considering the people’s collective frustration, which
Noredin indifferently watches on TV, the corruption might only be worse in
other contours of government institutions. After entering the crime scene, Noredin
searches the dead woman’s handbag and without a second thought steals wad of
cash. His uncle the Chief is delightfully eating the ordered fish, while the
singer’s corpse with bashed head is lying on the carpeted floor. That just
seems to be the way these things work here. The superior officers learn that a
Sudanese cleaning lady named Salwa (Mari Malek) has possibly seen the killer, but
they brush it off and closes the case as suicide. To investigate
Lalena’s murder means suspecting some of the very powerful men in Egypt. And
that wouldn’t end well for the police officers. However, Noredin stumbles onto
the reason for Lalena’s killing through the roll of film, he discretely took
from the crime scene.
In the photos, Lalena is intimate with Hatem Shafiq (Ahmed Selim), a most prominent real-estate developer, whose face is also plastered on
billboards, advertising about the upscale development projects he’s
constructing. Shafiq is also pals with the President’s son. He is clearly an
‘untouchable’. Meanwhile, the illiterate and undocumented Sudanese maid goes
into hiding after learning who she saw in the hotel corridor. Despite his superior's order Noredin pursues the case leads and he gradually develops a conscience. At the same time, the
dead girl’s beautiful friend Gina (Hania Amar) emerges, also a singer, unearthing
the detective's feelings of romance and lust (he is grieving over his
wife’s accidental death). The other members of police force warn him to
consider the sensitivities attached to the case. But Noredin, affected by the
climate of rebellion, wants to find the real killer.
The Tahrir Square protests and the distinctly Egyptian
undertones provide the narrative with an interesting context. Saleh has
remarked that he based his script after following the murder case of a Lebanese
Singer (Suzanne Tamim) in Dubai. It happened in 2008 and in the ensuing
investigation an officer of national Egyptian police force was arrested.
Furthermore, a very famous and powerful Egyptian businessman was also involved
in the murder. The case was widely covered by the Egyptian media. Saleh instead opts to set
his murder story in Cairo, a few days before the Revolution. This brilliant
backdrop offers Saleh to equate Noredin’s redemptive attitude with that of the
incredible societal uprising. Saleh’s strikingly animated debut-feature
Metropia (2009) was about an oddball protagonist, uncovering a terrifying
conspiracy. I didn’t watch his second feature Tommy (2014) which was touted as
a thriller with noir elements. With The Nile Hilton Incident, Saleh more
successfully blends his social commentary with deft aesthetic choices. Pierre
Aim’s cinematography (La Haine, Polisse) engulfs the bustling urban jungle under
hazy brown smokiness. Saleh-Aim’s foray into noir stylistics, including the
vividly lighted criminal underworld dens, mostly blends well with the narrative
elements.
At times, the film feels too overwrought (especially after
Noredin's tryst with Gina), but the heartbreaking finale packs a hefty punch. As
the mystery draws to an infuriating conclusion, withdrawing from Noredin’s tiny
conflict to capture the mass of uproarious citizens in movement, the bitter irony
tries to decimate the last vestige of hope within us. But there’s some sort of
hope in watching an individual and a society wanting to fight the putrefaction
that’s considered the norm. Altogether, The Nile Hilton Incident (111 minutes) is an effective Egyptian spin on the
classic film-noir style.
Trailer
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