City of Tiny Lights (2016)

A contemporary hard boiled private detective neo noir thriller set in London.The voiceover is provided by Tommy Akhtar (Riz Ahmed) looking after his cricket mad dad (Roshan Seth.) He is a hard drinking, chain smoking rather dinghy private eye in London.A prostitute called Melody (Cush Jumbo) hires him to find fellow prostitute Natasha who has gone missing after going off with a new client. Tommy finds the client dead in a hotel room.As Tommy delves deeper he comes across an old friend, who is now a wealthy property developer, trying to take the drug riddled estates, upmarket. The dead client was an associate of this developer. Tommy soon finds the security services sniffing around him. The dead man was also hanging around an imam who might be radicalising the youth, he certainly has a little gang who is chasing away drug dealers.As the film goes on, Tommy recalls his past, 20 years ago when he fancied his best mate's girl Shelley (Billie Piper.) We gather his mate died but he sees Shelley again who is now a single mother and both rekindle their affections for each other.There is nothing too original about City of Tiny Lights, we can sort of guess who will turn out to be the culprit. It all feels a little bleak and jagged. The movie needed more humour and should had been more offbeat. Albert Finney got it right in Stephen Frears 'Gumshoe' back in 1971.

I'm a fan of London based tales, probably biased as I grew up in south London, so first off, the American audience very rarely understand our street talk, and secondly, as for sound issues there is none and I was watching low volume too.I really enjoyed this film, yes some parts not superb but all in all its a good watch and has potential.

From what I actually did pick up on from the movie, the story was pretty interesting and Riz Ahmed did a pretty good job. It was incredibly hard to understand what everybody in the movie were saying, the background noise was too loud, the music was too loud, and the heavy accents at low volumes are hard to understand if you're not familiar with how they speak in England. I don't think they need to change their voices or anything, it's how they speak and I totally respect that, it was just hard to understand for me and most of the audience at my screening.My suggestion: watch it with subtitles when it releases on Blu-Ray and DVD.Seen at TIFF 2016.

"I deal with the lies people tell, and truths that they don't," says Tommy, a London detective. Everyone has secrets. Tommy enters the underworld of the big city in search of a missing woman. Along the way he revisits intimate betrayals, a tragic accident and an ex- girlfriend in a love triangle. Tommy struggles with his moral compass in such matters of the past. This inner struggle is worse than the storm of trouble of the outside world – which, by the way, includes terrorists, government agents, and shady real estate agents - for without knowing his heart or who or what to rely on, how can he react? What direction does he go? Who can he trust if he can't trust himself? Martin Luther King said it best, "if you don't have anything you are willing to die for, then what do you have to live for?!"From the director of Dredd, which I loved, this film was eight years in making. "Cinema should address such stories," said the director "it takes people to wholly different place." I think what Travis is getting at is that this Pakistani detective story gives us a glimpse not only of the London underworld but also of a very different perspective than many people are familiar with. The film delightfully incorporates lessons from the game of cricket including getting in the head of opponents (as with baseball, there is not much physical activity going on in cricket, and it is more of a mental game rather than a physical challenge for participants of this sport). It is wonderful seeing the film in a packed theater and on the big screen. As characters enter a nightclub, the seats vibrate with the throb of the base speakers kicking in. Americans do not understand why the detective doesn't have a gun, but they are illegal to possess in the U.K. There are camera shots from drones that add interesting angles to the filming location. Funny moments include a lot of escort jokes. "I'm surprised you showed up," said an escort to a detective. "Why are you surprised?" "People pay me and I don't have to come," she says. Even though the film is in English, it would be easier for North Americans to understand if there were subtitles or a phrasebook handed out at the start of the film for the wacky U.K. vocabulary! The film began with depth, energy and power, yet this promise was squandered. There were not that many twists to the story. World premiere seen at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.