The Iran Job

I think basketball is a beautiful and yet complicated game. Iran, at least to my western eyes, is an even more beautiful and infinitely more complicated country. This film is a very simple and sweet glimpse and people who cross over the borders surrounding basketball and Iran.

Just as Kevin Sheppard is not a monumental spokesman for all of the United States, the three sisters cannot capture the thousands of years of Iran/Persian in the past, nor the millions of people living there today.

But the human interest stories in this film are what draw us in on a personal level, Obama's inauguration and the election of Ahmadinejad over Moussavi take place while Kevin joins the Shiraz team in this film. I'm not sure how many "critics" here had they been filmed during those two events would have eloquently captured the moment. Intead I found the dinner when Kevin goes to the house of the Father of the three sisters to be more captivating.

That man, who says nothing on camera during the film, to me was the most fascinating character. Raising three strong women, balancing his belief in them and his faith in Islam, what a story must lie beneath the few moments we spend with them all. Kevin's gesture to politely pass on the head of the table setting at the dinner table was a nice moment of individual ambassador work. But even that scene is tinged with some sadness and misunderstanding as the Mother recaps her surprise that her guests did not stay for hours of fruit, nuts and conversation after the meal.

This film felt like meeting some people in fortuitous circumstances, maybe on a vacation retreat, or in the US at jury duty, where you get a glimpse of meaningful private moments in a mostly public setting. I think I'll wonder about the people on this film here, as I would for such "strangers" I encounter who temporarily break past the estrangement.

Two thoughts based on other comments I've read here. One, the sister Elaheh I don't think had a crush on Kevin so much as she did on the camera. Like many a good actress, her desired vocation, she knew the most important leading man for her is the lens. That being said, the lead-in to a Monday meeting with a potential suitor is set up and then dispatched with nary a follow-up, likely her wishful beau may have been rightfully jealous of the camera wanting to hold his intended in its gaze even while he did the same. Who knows? Also I've seen questions about Zoran, the seven footer from Serbia who does seem a veritable gentle giant. Effectively a migrant worker, away from his own family and young son, apparently in his 30's and it is alluded to his having been through the worst of the war in his homeland. It's almost as if he knows that the story of Kevin, and the sisters and their countries would not fit into this film, much less his own.

The simple truth of this film, that people interacting with each other in person, even with a disparity of background and a possible lack of communication somehow figure out their overwhelming similarities.

I'd never heard of "The Iran Job" but when I saw it listed on a Roku channel, I was immediately intrigued. A former US college basketball player spending a season in Iran??? As a lifelong hoops fan and former newscaster (I got out at the right time), I couldn't resist. As I write this two years later, I've now watched it three times and undoubtedly will watch it again. It is that good.

Short summary: Kevin Sheppard played guard at Jacksonville University, the school that sent Hall of Famer Artis Gilmore to the NBA. The 6-foot Sheppard averaged 13.5 and 16.1 points his last two seasons for the Dolphins before embarking on a peripatetic pro career that took him to 15 teams in several countries from Australia to Cuba to Israel between 2003 and his 2015 retirement. He was a good player who represented his native U.S. Virgin Islands in the Pan-American Games and other international tournaments. Sheppard already had performed for 11 teams over six years when he arrived in Shiraz, Iran in 2008, but this would be a totally different experience.

Sheppard is expected to lift an first-year team to their league playoffs, a rarity in basketball anywhere, while adjusting to a Muslim nation ruled by clerics who run a tight ship, to say the least. Iran was just months away from the so-called Persian Spring when this was filmed, creating (in a sense) a what-is-to-come backdrop that hindsight can afford. If you're a basketball fan, you'll see the frustration Kevin feels playing with teammates with physical talent who haven't developed toughness or basketball sense yet. a.s. Shiraz plays in a gym in front of crowds of 3,000 or so on some night and it's clear that Kevin is their best player. Regarding that part of the story, the younger players improve and start winning enough to challenge for a playoff spot after all. I was entertained and as long as you're not expecting the NBA, you'll enjoy it.

What made this doc stand out for me, however, were the three young women who befriended Kevin early in the season. They were all distinct from each other as people, but they were all intelligent and perceptive people who understood what their societal role was in Iran. While they lived with it to varying degrees, they all wanted better for themselves. These were the kinds of spirits who were at the heart of the Green Movement, which ultimately challenged the mullahs openly in 2009 as a protest of the country's recent presidential election but were eventually quelled.

I started watching this out of curiosity from a basketball sense and even if that was the only contex I got out of it, I'd still think it was worth the time. It was what was happening AWAY from the gym that makes "The Iran Job" a superb documentary interpolating sports with a nation mere months before its biggest political uprising since 1979, when a revolution changed it from a monarchy to a theocracy.

I gave this nine stars because not everyone likes basketball AND international politics (some may consider one topic or the other a distraction) but if you have interest in both, it's definitely worth a ten-star rating.

It is a different take on life in Iran. Kevin Sheppard is a college basketball star turned basketball world traveler as he goes from country to country paid to play basketball. He is not good enough to turn pro but decent enough to play for international leagues. I enjoyed seeing the contrast between the official "America is evil" take that the Iranian government pushes with the kind, warm way that Kevin Sheppard is treated by the Iranian citizens. He meets some pretty Iranian women one of whom develops a crush on him and brings him home to eat with her family. He is oblivious to her interest because he has a girl friend back home. Sweet funny movie with a touch of politics thrown in for good measure.

A great unknown among westerners is Iran. Yes, their government and western governments are at odds. But what I am talking about is the country--not the government. What is it like? What are the people like? Well, I cannot answer that first-hand (though I'd like to go there to visit one day), I do know that by glimpsing at the country through films that it isn't really all that different from us. The people, like any people, have similar hopes, dreams and humanity-- something you miss when you watch the news on TV. Try watching some of Majid Majidi's great films like "Children of Heaven" or "The Color of Paradise" and you'll see this humanity.

In the case of "The Iran Job", however, you have a documentary--not a staged film--in order to get a glimpse at life in Iran. Through the course of the film, you travel with Kevin Sheppard as he leaves the familiarity of life in St. Croix (the US Virgin Islands) and moves to Iran to play for one of their teams. Surprisingly, he is NOT treated like an outcast even though the official government position is clearly anti-American. I was shocked how much he bonded with the team and vice-versa and the film gives you glimpses into the way young women are dealing with a harsh Muslim climate as well as the country as it nearly plunged into civil war following their hotly contested election.

All in all, a very well made film that works on many levels (heck, I even liked the rapping in Farsi that is much of the soundtrack). It helps that you genuinely like Sheppard and his teammates but it also gives a rare chance to see folks as folks--and it's a real treat that, unfortunately, too few people will end up seeing.

I am making comments on this film in reaction to a previous review I saw which completely slammed it on very little basis. Firstly, I didn't think the 3 Iranian women in the documentary came across as having "no other worries other than becoming an actress or getting married" - anything but - they were strong women prepared to speak up about the political situation in Iran and the position of women. I'm not surprised they are in trouble with the authorities and my one criticism of the film makers is that they effectively encouraged them to reveal their identities in one scene on the understanding that the film was not going to be seen by those inside Iran. The most important outcome of the film for me was Kevin's (The US basketball player's) comment that he now thought he understood and respected the point of women on a deeper level since knowing these women in Iran.

Iranians in the film didn't come across as "hopeless idiots" nor did Iranian culture as "shallow and ridiculous". I wonder if we saw the same film really? A clue to this hopelessly negative review, however, might be the reviewer's statement: "It was unfortunate that I wasn't informed about this movie's exceptionally low quality beforehand, so I figured I do my share of informing those who haven't spent their time and money on it yet". I'm always wary of people who look to be "informed" of a film's low quality beforehand - who would do the informing? Someone with exactly the same views as yourself, I suppose. Most people prefer to make their own minds up.

Also, by the way, it is a difficult, if not totally unfair, task to compare a fictionalised blockbuster Hollywood drama like "Argo" with a very small budget documentary like "The Iran Job". Personally, I admire Argo as an exceptional film but you only have to know a few Iranians to know how controversial Argo is to them. Many regard the portrayal of the Iranian characters in it as just as stereotypically idiotic as you claim those in the Iran Job to be.