Captain Abu Raed review

★★★★☆

Release date: 2007

Director: Amin Matalqa

Producers: Amin Matalqa

Main cast: Nadim Sawalha, Rana Sultan, Huessein Al- Sous

Captain Abu Raed follows the story of an older gentleman name Abu Raed who works as a janitor at an airpot. The movie starts off with Abu Raed grieving his dead wife, and simply wanting more out of life. While being in the airport working, he walks around wearing a pilots hat; which a group of children see and are convinced that he is a pilot after Abu Raed goes along with the assumption. Abu Raed tells the children stories about all of his adventures as a pilot, but one child does not believe that Abu Raed is telling the truth. The young boy tries to show the group that Abu Raed is lying to them, and once they all go to the airport, and inevitably see that Abu Raed is simply just a janitor, his act was up. Abu Raed doesn't mind that he was outed, and instead shows compassion for the child who didn't originally believe him. Eventually we learn that one of the children and his mother are going through abuse at home from the husband, and Abu Raed does what he can to save the both of them. This leads to Abu Raed's death from the abusive father, but his memory stayed with the child, for he grew up to become a pilot. 

This film was really amazing, although emotional and sad, it was so well done. I think it was bittersweet seeing Abu Raed living vicariously through the stories he was telling the children. I think ht fact that the children believed him at first, it made the fantasy come to life even more and allowed him to feel what that life would have been like if he were to achieve it. Out of 1.7 thousand IMDb voters, Captain Abu Raed was given a score of 7.3/10. 16% of those voters gave the movie it's highest rating of a 10/10, and 2.2% gave the movie it's lowest rating of a 1/10. I was a little surprised with this overall rating, for I thought it would be higher due to it being so emotional and touching. I think my favorite part of this movie, is I was fully prepared for religion and politics to be incorporated in some shape or form in this movie. It's unfortunate but every time I see any media, news, shows, or movies regarding the Middle East, I feel like there is almost always some form of politics or religion mentioned or shown throughout. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was neither of those in this movie. It made it feel like any other movie if I'm being honest.. Many Middle Eastern movies are very religious or political (especially emotional  and serious ones such as this) and for this to be of this genre, and not include it was very nice and refreshing in a way.