In 2011 Cairo, corruption infects everything. The president, Hosni Mubarak, heads a government so wantonly crooked it has brought hordes of protestors out to the street to demand his removal. The dishonestly trickles down into all powerful bodies, including, especially, the police.
Fares Fares is Noredin, a Cairo detective who has risen through the ranks via nepotism. He takes a very casual view of the law. He’ll demand a bribe or steal cash from a dead body without a second thought or a nervous glance. That’s just the way things work. Getting rich is more important than doing right. Noredin has a sudden attack of conscience following the murder of a famous singer. A cleaning lady witnessed the killing, but Noredin’s superiors want to brush it off as a suicide, because to investigate would throw suspicion on some very powerful, very rich men.
Tarik Saleh gives his film an oppressively real feel. You can almost smell the thick cigarette smoke in every room and even the glamorous clubs where the rich lock themselves away from the poor are sordid and dusty. His characters are archetypes – the detective alone in the world; a prostitute who puts her life too easily in the hands of the wrong man – put into an unfamiliar, vividly drawn world that gives a familiar story new energy.
It has the twistiness and nihilism of an Egyptian Chinatown. Hope is in scant supply. The right thing is rarely done and when it’s not, few care. Noredin’s investigation is not so much a hunt for whodunnit, because we know from the first minutes who is responsible, but a fight to try to hold someone accountable. He’s swimming against a tide that wants to wash away all dissent. Saleh frequently throws the action in among roiling street protests, showing Noredin’s fight as just one tiny battle in an entire country screaming that enough is enough. We see little evidence that those screams are being heard, but their growing volume represents some sort of hope.