Review: A Hero

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Iranian director Asghar Farhadi's films could be described as modern-day fables or, for lack of a better phrase, morality plays, although the filmmaker doesn't indulge in moralizing. His 2011 masterpiece "A Separation" was a riveting story about mores and the nature of truth, while his other films of the past decade or so - "The Salesman," "About Elly," "Everybody Knows" and "The Past" - also explored complex, thematically driven stories about human nature.

His latest, "A Hero," is another parable that could best be summed up by the adage, "no good deed goes unpunished." It's another of Farhadi's stories in which a person's intentions and the question of truth versus falsehood run up against bureaucratic red tape and flawed human nature. In other words, it's pretty weighty - but intriguing - stuff.

In the film, Rahim (Amir Jadidi) has been released from the debtor's prison where he's been kept for an undisclosed amount of time for a pass for several days, during which he is able to go see his family - a young son with a stutter, a sister and her family - as well as a devoted girlfriend, Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldust), who has a plan for him to be released from prison.

Apparently, Farkhondeh has discovered a bag of gold coins - it's a little nebulous just where she stumbled across them - and says that Rahim should use the money resulting from the coins to pay off half of his debt to Bahram (Mohsen Tanabandeh), who fronted him some money for a business venture some time before, and when Rahim couldn't pay him back, Bahram denounced him, leading to Rahim's imprisonment.

It's somewhat questionable whether Rahim doesn't think his girlfriend's plan will pan out or if he has an actual crisis of conscience, but he decides to put out an announcement that he has discovered the gold coins, which he will return to the owner. A woman shows up claiming they're hers, the coins are returned, and then Rahim is praised by a local council for his good deed.

A TV news show interviews him about his deed, and the council is planning to hold an event to raise money to help Rahim pay off part of his debt to Bahram, but with the agreement that Bahram will forgive the other half of the debt - a plan that Bahram does not seem pleased about. Rahim quickly becomes a center of attention, and those who operate the prison also want to get in on the action by making them seem benevolent in letting Rahim go once the deal with Bahram is worked out.

But trouble begins brewing when the authorities start questioning all who are involved, and it doesn't help that the woman to whom the coins were returned cannot be tracked down. Rahim's story begins to be questioned, and he and Farkhondeh come up with a plan that involves a lie when being questioned by the authorities that slowly begins to backfire.

So, what starts out as a "no good deed goes unpunished" story becomes somewhat of a mystery as to whether the deed was good to begin with. Also, to make matters more complicated - and compelling for the viewer - while Bahram is, at first, portrayed as a jerk, he seems less unreasonable once we learn the circumstances of his being left holding the bag after Rahim couldn't pay him back, and a visit by Rahim to Bahram's place of work that ends in a scuffle complicates matters even further.

Ultimately, Rahim's deed matters less after the prison warden attempts to get Rahim to use his stuttering son in a new plot to help everyone save face, and Rahim rejects the proposal. If the first good deed was possibly questionable, then his second, redemptive attempt at one is not. Regardless, "A Hero" is the type of film in which there's no black and white, but rather complicated shades of gray.

As such, Farhadi's film is an engrossing one - much like his others - about complex moral dilemmas. He remains Iran's best living filmmaker, and a weaver of engrossing stories that play like thrillers and often create a significant amount of suspense from the mundane. While "A Separation" remains the pinnacle of his work, and "The Salesman" is likely a strong second place, his latest film is a solid entry into the director's oeuvre. For viewers with patience, "A Hero" yields many rewards.