While widely hailed as the first genre film to come out of the United Arab Emirates, and displaying some fun and flashy visual skill, this isn't a very deep film, nor a great one.
The story is simple and has potential. An 'everyman' type is locked in a small local jail for some sort of brawl. While waiting to be bailed out a stranger enters and brutally murders the local sheriff in front of our 'hero' and hides the body. Why? And what will he do to our protagonist? (not really a spoiler - it happens at the very start of the film).
The cat and mouse game that plays out between the two men facing off in essentially one room for the whole film is cleverly shot and definitely has real moments of fun. But the film is a bit trapped between tones. The outrageous villain is played and written too campy and over-the-top to be believable enough to be scary, but too brutally violent and dark to be much fun. And our 'hero' remains a mostly blank sketch, so it's hard to be involved on a deeper level. Throw in a mix of some predictable late turns, and others that stretch credulity and logic, and you have a film that is fast paced and fun to watch, but not one that will linger in the memory or call for a second visit.
