An emotionally exhausting, sometimes uneven, yet nonetheless thought provoking drama, that explores the divergent paths of siblings Sohail (Riz Ahmed, last seen in powerful docu-drama 'The Road to Guantanamo') and Nasima Walid (Manjinder Virk, in her second 'Channel 4' production after 'Karim's Story: The Bradford Riots') 'Britz', written & directed by neo-realist veteran Peter Kominsky ('The Weapons Inspector') is an epic film of two halves, coming in at 120 minutes each. Part 1 focuses on Sohail: an ambitious, articulate, second generation British Muslim from Bradford. A Law undergraduate in London, Sohail decides to embark upon a career with MI5 after coming home for the holidays; Ahmed does well to convey Sohail's disillusion at being back up North, after all, the "backwards" rural customs of his Midlands community seem like a world away from his time at university. And he makes a number of valid points about the Pakistani proletariat's inability to secure their civil rights after so many years of service to Britain; citing how "...more whites than Muslims marched against the Iraq war" and how "More English people are standing in-front of Israeli bulldozers in Palestine..." And yet Sohail, in spite of his obvious intelligence, makes a number of schoolboy errors; naively believing he can fight terrorism from within an organisation that experts warn is currently used by external criminal elements (i.e. an Anglo-American-Israeli 'Triangle Of Terror' or fifth column lacertilian kakistocracy) to implement & organise self inflicted 'Hegelian Paradigm' based attacks via agent provocateurs within the police state apparatus (claims publically verified by numerous MI6 agents, both active-anonymous, retired and disavowed). His inability to fully comprehend the fascistic nature of new anti-terror legislation or his reluctance to equate racism with government policy. 'Britz' opens with an intensely grim, but gripping scene in a mortuary, where Sohail identifies a mutilated corpse, this scene and three others act as bridges between the sibling's stories, and though some may argue that Kominsky's script imagines an implausibly polarized world where Muslims are either sell-out spies or suicide bombers, it's 'Britz' supporting characters, young women in particular, who act as our guides through a moral maze of points and counter points. One of the standout performances comes from Zahra Ahmadi, playing Nasima's best friend Sabia, Ahmadi is a real revelation; targeted by the police (though the 'brother-wanted-for-questioning' angle was a little trite) we share her pain / frustration and watch in anger as a strong, vibrant young anti-war activist is physically & psychologically broken down by the craven tyranny of control orders, electronic tagging and prison. Its a relatively small role, but one which should resonate deeply with those who value the universal testaments of human decency & the rule of law our judiciary once upheld. Now I'm reliably informed that Zahra is a regular on 'EastEnders', but soaps just aren't my thing; Ahmadi needs to quit Albert Square immediately, and casting directors should take note of this powerful new talent that's arrived on our scene. Sohail's story is actually quite awkward in places, and often feels rushed in spite of the movie length running time, though Riz Ahmed puts in another excellent performance; his displays of indignation, grief and disappointment with his superiors in the spy game are measured & subtle, thus making his character instantly believable despite the often contrived scenarios he finds himself in. A particularly powerful scene in which story, directing and acting come together is where an MI6 spook profiles an archetypical terrorist; the juxtaposition of his speech with the camera on Sohail is brilliant in its simplicity and effect. Nasima's story is the better of the two; a young medical student whose encounter with deep rooted government corruption, religious persecution
& the evils of the police state, leads her to abandon peaceful protest & sybaritic pleasures for the harsh environs of a paramilitary training ground in Pakistan. Manjinder Virik deserves a lot of credit for the convincing manner in which she brings Nasima's changing attitudes, values and beliefs to life. Injustices building up to a point where she shares a level of frustration better suited to the Palestinian in Gaza (a reference used disparagingly in Sohail's story) which, in many ways, unifies her struggle in the purest sense of internationalism & solidarity. Kominsky also makes a courageous directorial decision to remind us of the unspeakable crimes being perpetrated by those who are, whether we care to admit it or not, acting in our name: The news footage of an adolescent Iraqi girl crippled & blinded by U.S. and British bombs, though an item we've seen before, never loses its power to disturb, upset & enrage. The director suggests that the sheer magnitude, avaricious terrorism and horror of our government's ongoing crimes against humanity, is so often lost amidst the din of political hubris and bipartisan debate, that one needs to refocus on the main issues to re-establish rational context. Nasima is challenged with us; for when the radical Islamist proves the futility of genteel protest, we're reminded of events through history that back up his claim. After all, as 'The Internationalist Review' rightly pointed out in its 'October Revolution' commemorative issue; the only protestors who ever successfully pulled their nation out of an unjust, unpopular war (i.e. 'World War I') were V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky and 90,000 heavily armed Bolshevik guerrillas. As with Sohail's story, there are a few plot points that don't work as well as Kominsky might've hoped: e.g. the sultry, Leila Khalid-esque matriarch of the militant training centre is far too enigmatic and glamorous whilst Nasima's boyfriend is a bit of a plank, practically reduced to maguffin status by the end. Virik is at her best in the training camp sequence itself, bonding with another girl from up North, slowly discovering that many recruits are the brothers, sisters & friends of those disappeared, imprisoned or murdered by the U.S. and its international acolytes. Critics may blast 'Britz' deftly matter-of fact approach to the bomb making scene (Nasima and colleague constructing it whilst listening to 'Snow Patrol') as terrorist propaganda, the stylistic antithesis of a similar scene in Gillo Pontecorvo's masterpiece 'The Battle Of Algiers' (1965). But that would be missing the point, for this sequence, (much more than the ever-so-slightly ludicrous oath scene in the training camp) though easily misinterpreted, represents a kind of lyterian catharsis: signifying the end of Nasima's life as she had lived it (i.e. assassinating naivety and burying her belief in the system) and the beginning of a new, albiet extreme, epoch or metaphysical transition (i.e. physical death as spiritual reawakening: classic themes found in everything from Foxe's 'Protestant Book Of Martyrs' to Homer's 'The Iliad').

'Britz' ultimately identifies indifference, societal ignorance and collective moral weakness as the biggest culprits of all. It doesn't glorify terror or suicide bombing, but tackles the subject from a humanist perspective with an emphasis on reason, rationality and empathy with those who suffer under the yoke of occidental imperialism; be they in Iraq, Palestine or at home. For as the pre-Socratic masters once said: order is only ever established through the implementation of justice, and any nation that succumbs to the whims, hypocrisy, inequity and greed of its current regime will always be a hated & unstable entity. And though its' impossible not to draw comparisons with 'The Battle Of Algiers', 'Paradise Now', 'V: For Vendetta', 'Bloody Sunday', 'Syrianna' or 'The Wind That Shakes The Barely', 'Britz' suffers due to its reluctance to question 'official explanations': government approved conspiracy theories erroneously repeated as facts. Stories that have, since the London terror attacks on '7/7', been systematically dismantled by numerous independent journalists, political authors and documentarians; it's a programme that runs with the perceived MO instead of challenging false conceptions that may have been placed into the public domain through corporate media repetition, slanted or lazy journalism. Hence this reactionary approach, by its very nature, limits any serious exploration of the issue, and leaves us wanting more. 'Britz', in spite of this flaw, is to the so-called 'War On Terror' what 'Threads' (1984) was to the nuclear debate: an engaging and well acted drama, an important, unflinchingly controversial film made to encourage debate, the kind of programming that reminds you why 'Channel 4' was created in the first place.

And though its' not the whole truth by any stretch, you'll have to watch Alex Jones's groundbreaking documentaries '9/11: The Road To Tyranny' (2004), 'Endgame' (2006) and 'Terror-Storm' (2007) for that, this is still a fine production which, if nothing else, retains its power to wake the masses from their slumber with Nasima's sobering final message and a stark warning from George Churchill Coleman, Former Head of Scotland Yard's Anti-Terrorist Unit, that we ignore at our own peril: "I have a horrible feeling that we are sinking into a police state".