Honour (2014) Directed by Shan Khan

This maybe isn't the powerful or thought provoking movie that it tries to be but it still is a pretty decent, low-budget, British drama-thriller about a controversial subject; 'honour' killings.

This truly is a movie with both strong points and some weaknesses in it. One of the things with this movie is that it's trying to tell a serious and realistic story but at the same time it's also featuring a whole bunch of typical movie clichés and 'Hollywood-like' developments in it, so it's hard to take this movie completely serious at times. Maybe the movie was afraid it otherwise would be a too controversial one for anyone to watch. The movie as a whole also therefor isn't ever making a clear point or statement with anything. I wouldn't necessarily call it lazy or bad writing, since the movie is about a subject that's hard to tackle, without having to offend or judge certain persons but it's still disappointing how the movie isn't featuring a strong and good enough message in it.

Guess you can praise the movie for being as neutral and objective as possible and indeed, it also does feel like it's doing a pretty good job with treating its subject as fair as possible, from all different angles and perspectives. But after having finished watching this movie, I just still can't really say that I completely understand what honour killings are all about. The movie tries but it just isn't ever going deep enough. Not that the movie is a shallow one but it's still lacking a certain depth, regarding its main subject.

Sounds like the movie is a terrible and completely ineffective one but that luckily really isn't the case. Mainly thanks to its subject, it's still a very interesting movie to watch that does a good job with tellings its story, even though the story itself is lacking some good depth. It's a very professional looking and feeling movie. And despite its heavy subject, it's never a too heavy movie to watch as well. This is both a positive and negative thing about this movie. Positive because it makes the movie a perfectly watchable and accessible one and negative because it means that the movie isn't ever making enough of an impact.

Another thing that helps to make this movie a perfectly watchable one is the acting. Aiysha Hart plays a great leading role and is an actress to keep an eye on. Sort of feels weird and silly that this movie gets presented as a Paddy Considine vehicle, while it's really Aiysha Hart's movie in fact. It's understandable from a marketing point of view, since Considine has played in some pretty big movies and is a recognizable name and face in Britain but for a movie that should be all about women's rights and should work out as female empowering, it of course doesn't help much that there's a tough looking man on the cover and Paddy Considine's name is the first one to appear, like this is some sort of action-packed guy's flick.

All in all, it's a perfectly watchable movie, that however fails to leave much of a mark.

6/10

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