So I’ve just come back from watching a showing of independent film American Sharia, a buddy-cop comedy-drama action film. However, what makes it stand out – is that it’s a Muslim film. A massive problem with the entertainment industry is how is representation – be it people of colour or women. In order to help promote fair and accurate representation of Muslims in the media (which promote the ugly perception that Muslims are intolerants and terrorists), Omar Regan, an American stand-up comedian and actor (as well as former musician), set up his own production company called Halalywood Entertainment (btw, I LOVE the name ‘Halalywood’ and I’m annoyed I didn’t think of it first).
The film stars Omar Regan, Baba Ali and Eric Roberts. This is Omar Regan’s first production that he has produced, written and (co-)directed. He has appeared in the films Internet Dating and Life is Hot in Crackdown, but more interestingly is that he was Chris Tucker’s photo double in Rush Hour 2 – which is very interesting because, as is apparent from the trailer, Regan does channel a LOT of Tucker’s Carter in American Sharia.
Baba Ali is also in this film. Baba Ali is also a Muslim comedian (as well as a games developer and entrepreneur), but also a vlogger – and thus is probably my main inspiration for getting both into film-making and comedy, so I was really excited about his involvement in this film.
Eric Roberts was a surprise. As the only promotional material I read before the showing was given to me by PennyAppeal (more on them later), who understandably played up Regan’s and Ali’s involvement over Roberts’ when directing their adverts to Muslims, and as he didn’t appear in the trailer. But I DID recognise Roberts’ name in the opening titles, and I spent the next couple of minutes wondering whether or not it is the same Eric Roberts who infamously appeared as the Master in the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie (and recently he was in The Dark Knight as Sal Maroni – he’s been in some other stuff too, but none of which I’ve seen). As soon as he turned up, he was instantly recognisable. I was not expecting an established Hollywood actor in this independent film – in the post-showing Q&A, Regan explained that Roberts was there to help with getting support of a mainstream studio, and also to attract viewership by appealing to Roberts’ fandom. I’m not sure what following Eric Roberts has in America, but I don’t feel he’s as well known in Britain. Certainly I would bet money that I was the only person in the showing who recognised him.
So the showing: The film is an indie film – and without the backing of a mainstream studio, was reduced to being shown during tours. The UK tours were hosted by PennyAppeal. In the post-showing Q&A, Regan explained that he had gone to Lions Gate Entertainment for backing to the film, but wasn’t able to secure any (which isn’t a surprise – mainstream film studios are not going to back any film that isn’t easily marketable to a white male demographic).
The evening started with two stand-up sets by Muslim comedians. The first was performed by Preacher Moss, who also makes an appearance in the film, followed by Omar Regan himself, who incorporated some stand-up whilst explaining the film and its conception.
I really love Islamic comedy – because it focuses a LOT on smashing stereotypes (generally as well as those specifically pertaining to Islam and Muslims) AND on encouraging mutual co-operation between people of different beliefs and race. It mocks racism and intolerance more than anything else, which appeals to me as a social activist (and, you know, not a ass of a human being).
After the warm up, PennyAppeal did some fundraising, to get money to build an orphanage and also to sponsor orphans. The short film that was played showed frankly amazing facilities that previous projects have built. I believe in the evening £7,000 about was raised for a new orphanage (which needs £40,000 in total), as well as just under 40 orphans being sponsored.
Finally after this we got to the film (while I don’t wanna hate on a charity for fundraising, and I’m so happy so many people donated – I do feel they stretched it a bit much, especially as the seats weren’t that comfortable – people, as you expect, got restless).
I’m going to first comment on production before I comment on the actual film. The film was made on a very tight budget that actually ran out half way through and so more had to be raised. A Kickstarter was used. Furthermore there was a tight schedule of 18 days to film it, without the support of a major studio, and also this film was the first project for Omar Regan as a director (whilst acting simultaneously also) and writer. I will try to bear that in mind with my constructive criticism – but I also feel that I would be doing a disservice to Omar Regan and the filmmakers to give anything less than my honest opinion. Things which can’t be helped due to lack of funding can sometimes be covered by sheer ingenuity. And at the end of the day, the end product is what will be judged. I’m going to feel awful about any of the negative stuff I say, because I met Omar Regan after the showing and he is an awesome and amazing guy – but again, I’d not be doing anything for him by not being objective with my review.
So production: Firstly the sound. The sound was my biggest issue with production – but I’m not sure who to blame. At the viewing, sometimes the sound wasn’t played loud enough for lines to be discerned, including important ones. Sometimes the music was too loud over dialogue.
However I am aware that I saw this film at Newcastle’s Dance City. The venue was a dance stage – not a cinema, which is optimised for film viewings. Because of this I’m not sure if the fault is in the sound mixing of the film OR Dance City’s audio systems. However, a problem which certainly was with the film’s production is I felt some lines, especially those spoken by Preacher Moss and during the conference scene at the beginning were spoken quite quickly, and I had trouble hearing them. I feel this is something which needs to be looked at.
Secondly: Lighting. Lighting is difficult, and though I know quite a bit about it for stagecraft, I’ve not had to work with it as much in film. However there were some big shadow problems in the film, where characters were not lit, they had shadows falling on them, they were backlit. As I said, this is probably more understandable in a indie film, on a budget and probably limited abilities to perform post-production colour correction.
There was also a small visual problem which … looked like it had something to do with how the images were interlacing? During the scene where Detective Mohammed goes for a jog … he is all … stripey? I don’t know how to describe it, and obviously I don’t have images to give you – but I’m not sure if that’s a problem with the film or the projector. Similarly, the striped clothes the shop owner was wearing caused the images to go weird – again, unsure as to if the film is the problem or the projector in Dance City.
So the film’s contents (for want of a better word): I was looking forward to the film, based on the trailer it looked quite promising. The final product didn’t quite live up to the trailer, sadly. The plot is about corrupt government officials trying to use ‘Islamaphobia’ to maintain power, while two cops investigate the disappearance of several Muslims. Or at least this is what Wikipedia tells me. The big problem I had throughout the movie is that I wasn’t really able to follow the plot – I’m not sure if this is because, as mentioned above, audio problems caused me to miss crucial lines, or because the plot lacked cohesion – instead of being one plot it was a series of scenes that didn’t quite glue together. In terms of the plot synopsis concerning the two cops, if this was indeed the intent, it didn’t come through – I wasn’t aware at any point that the cops were investigating any missing appearances until Mo comes across (seemingly by accident) the prison where they’re all being held and has a confrontation with Richardson. Most of the time Mo and Abdul seem to just be driving around and dealing with various crimes more than anything else. There were scenes which seemed to jar with other scenes – for example in the third act, three activists are shot at (the gunman pulls out his pistol, and the scene cuts to black as the shots are heard). The news report following states they were ‘gunned down’ however then we cut to Mo and Abdul talking to the third activist (who is revealed to be an informant) in his hospital bed, and the other two standing next to him perfectly fine – and this is never explained. Or if it is, not clearly to me. There’s also references in this movie to Mo’s father, and there’s a scene which is intended to explain Mo’s motivations in this film as someone who is somewhat reserved about his faith where he breaks down in front of his shrink and makes comments about his father. It was extremely obvious this scene was meant to describe Mo’s motivations – but it failed to come across. And this is why. In the post-film Q&A, Regan explained that was based on a real life event – his own step-father was an Imaan who was wrongfully shot twenty-times by the FBI on what later turned out to be incorrect intel. Throughout the film, Mo is seen watching a video of his step-father. This made the scene and Mo’s motivations very clear – but the problem is, of course, that the film didn’t do this. You would have to already be aware of what happened to Regan’s step-father to understand and appreciate the scene, and I did not before the Q&A. Obviously, the circumstances would be a difficult subject for Regan, but if he is embedding the event into his film, context is needed, otherwise what would’ve otherwise been a very emotional and powerful scene is sadly lost.
I’m going to now deal with the message of the film, because that’s the most important thing about this film. The film’s aim was to make a good Muslim film to promote better representation of Muslims in the media – and so the film’s message was, in the spirit of Muslim comedy, smashing down misconceptions and stereotypes, as well as making some light political commentary. The issue I had was at some points in the film, this was so deliberately spelt out for you, and so clunkily inserted into the dialogue, that it took you out of the film. It felt like YOU were being talked to. And this is a problem because if a film reminds you you’re in a theatre, it also causes you to lose some interest in the film. On the flip side, at other points of the film, and not helped by the audio problems, it was hard to really tell what point the film was trying to make. There was a scene, and if someone who else saw the movie can correct me here if I misheard, where the two black officers, the Chief and his sergeant, were discussing how to get the Muslim population on their side. The sergeant goes on a rant (that was somewhat hard to follow) about how Americans built their society by befriending Native Indians before wiping them out with smallpox that was deliberately given with the gifts, and how Americans gave black people their freedom from slavery only to impose harsh laws which made them second class citizens. This gives the Chief an idea of how to get the Muslims on his side – by getting a Muslim cop to integrate with the Muslims and ‘speak Muslim’ to them (I’m not entirely sure what this means either, because, as I mentioned above, the two cops never do this either). I’m not sure if getting two black people to get inspiration from what white Americans did in the past is deliberate irony or not (assuming I understood the scene correctly – I may very well be mistaken here and someone please point out if I missed a massive point of the scene), but it did make me confused and uncomfortable.
However, the film also had a lot of good moments (I realised I’m being too negative, sorry Omar!). There were some lines of dialogue which made some very good comments on the issues that both American Muslims and black Americans face, including some comments on Ferguson. The character of Richardson was excellently done (and excellently played by Eric Roberts – Regan did not underuse him at all). Richardson basically embodied the issue of institutionalised racism, as he went around profiling Muslims and harassing them. There was a scene in particular where Richardson pulls out his weapon on a couple he has just ordered out of a car despite them both being unarmed. When the husband gets scared and tries to move in front of his wife, Richardson shoots him (I think it’s implied non-fatally, but I’m not sure). It’s an obvious reference to events happening in America where it is being alleged that black people are being profiled and shot, despite being unarmed, and then the police trying to cover it up by embellishment, specifically Mike Brown and Antonio Martin. (Earlier in the film, in a rather tense scene, Richardson terrorises a Muslim by forcing him out of his car and carefully aiming his pistol into the Muslim’s face, before two of the activists arrive, filming, and telling Richardson, rightfully, he is not allowed to unholster and use his weapon against an unarmed man.) The film also has some good comic moments, especially when Regan and another black officer who joins them (but I sadly can’t remember the name because I am rubbish with names, and neither Wikipedia nor IMDb can help me with this indie film [incidentally, IMDb only lists Eric Roberts in the top billing, and Regan doesn’t even appear unless you expand the credits – which I think is horrendous]) make comments on how action movies have fight scenes in hospitals where they have to save a target from being assassinated (a deliberate reference to Rush Hour 3, I’m sure) and when Abdul complains about them shooting excessively at an armed fleeing suspect, they apologise, saying ‘it’s a black thing’.
Speaking of Baba Ali’s Abdul – Baba Ali is fantastic in this film, especially as I believe it’s his first actual extensive acting experience (he plays different characters during his vlogs and stand up, and he made a cameo in a short film that he produced, but this is his first major role I think). I complained above about how sometimes the message this film was trying to convey felt sometimes shoe-horned and not integrated into the dialogue – for the most part, Ali avoids this, helped no doubt by how he performs in his Reminder vlogs, where he using comedy and characters to smash misconceptions about Islam and racial stereotypes. And he plays his character spot on to the T.
After the film, there was a Q&A, and, (in reply to a question I asked) Regan revealed that the film would be released on DVD much later in the year – after he has recut it. He was using the audience reaction through the film to note what worked and what didn’t. I was actually very glad to hear this. I felt the film’s premise is a brilliant concept and that the film could’ve been really, really good, but it was let down by its editing which made the plot not just fit together neatly. I’ve been a bit negative in this review and I feel bad about it, but I am hoping that Omar Regan reads this (and doesn’t hate me for it!) and uses it to help with the recut of the film – which I will of course be buying the second it comes out. He mentioned there was 20 mins of footage which was cut from the film – and this didn’t surprise me. In fact, throughout the film, a LOT of the scenes in the trailer weren’t in the film or were completely different takes – some of them were funnier, some of them weren’t as funny, some were neither funnier or less funny but had a different meaning due to the change in shots. (The white cop featured prominently in the trailer for example – I can’t quite tell if he was in the movie in a smaller role or if he wasn’t in it at all, but the hilarious scene where he gets a brown child to try and pick out a suspect from among a line-up of veiled women is replaced by a darker comic scene where Richardson asks a white man who the suspect is, and when he says he can’t tell, Richardson simply gets him to choose at random.)
I bought a Halalywood Entertainment t-shirt after the showing (did I mention how much I love that name) and met with Omar Regan and had a nice short conversation with him.
Omar Regan is an amazing and hilarious guy, and he even consented to letting me film him for a cameo for my own up-coming film. I’m making a film with the Newcastle Comedy Society for the Sunderland Shorts Film Festival – and incidentally it’s a buddy cop film. So yeah. I get to put my money where my mouth is and see how well I can make a movie now. Eek. (I actually should be editing the script right now for the read-through in an hour, but I was writing this instead so erm … gtg)
Thanks for reading my review! If you’re in one of the cities that American Sharia has yet to go to, make sure you go to check it out, you’ll have an amazing time, and you’ll be supporting Muslim representation in the media. Also go an support PennyAppeal, they are an amazing charity that does a lot of amazing work with orphans!
American Sharia is copyright of Halalywood Entertainment. All copyright material used is protected under Fair Use.
