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Sun Herald

Sunday August 31, 2008

Rob Lowing

IT'S the flavoursome detail that sustains the simply plotted Pakistan drama Son Of A Lion (rated PG). This subtitled father-son tale was shot on location, with a script co-written with Pashtun clans on the remote North-West Frontier.

Extraordinarily, the movie was directed by Australian Benjamin Gilmour, who spent months working with the local villagers.

The level of trust on both sides permeates the film.

The plot, about an 11-year-old boy who wants to go to school but whose impoverished father needs him to work, might feel stalled midway.

However, the sense of eavesdropping on candid conversations will transfix Western viewers to the end. You just couldn't invent lines like the client instructing his barber to "do something about my al-Qaeda [bushy beard]" but warning him not "to make a Tora Bora" of it. Add chats about whether the Pashtuns would shelter Osama bin Laden and casual references to out-of-work Taliban and relatives selling Stinger missiles. You get an invaluable insight into a politically aware rural culture.

Inevitably, perhaps, the women are sidelined. But nothing dims the documentary-like impact of filming on the streets of Peshawar, with its endless painted-gun images and continuous gunfire. The amateur actors do well, helped by Gilmour's agile hand-held camerawork. These shots of strong-boned faces and red, broken landscape are enhanced by vibrant local music. Rated 7/10

EITHER big-screen movie-makers have run out of ideas or Wild Ocean 3D (rated G) is being funded by the South African tourism bureau.

This look at a large shoal of sardine-gathering off the Natal coast alternates familiar, uninteresting, touristy images of painfully posed locals with repetitive shots of dolphins, sharks and seabirds gathering to feed on the incoming fish.

Yes, there are a few striking moments with leaping dolphins, a humpback whale and in an aerial skim along the coast.

However, as more 3D fiction features head into multiplexes, it isn't enough to plop out 45 minutes of gigantic-sized environmental pleading. And, apart from a baby shark briefly nosing the audience, there were no other notable 3D effects. Rated 2/10