Robert Krulwich

This little film has nice little moments; I like the driver; I like that he is making a movie after being arrested, questioned, maybe even roughed up by the Iranian state and yet here he is, back again, posing as a taxi driver with his dashboard camera on, telling us stories, making a movie that might be too slight to be detected. But....well, wait to the last scene. What's unusual here is that lots of his characters also have cameras, his niece does, his old neighborhood friend does; they also arebusy either making films, sharing films,trading films; a bootlegger tries to sell him Woody Allen movies, a video dealer tries to cut him in on his pirate movie business; a wounded man wants to be filmed for legal reasons; everybody in Teheran seems to be taking pictures. The weak part is they also give little lectures which feel like set pieces about crime and punishment, about freedom. I'd have been a little happier if those lessons hadn't stuck out like little speeches, but mostly, I just enjoyed driving around a big world class city that's filled with noisy, happy, angry, busy, kind and not so kind people, like the city where I live, but, in many little, fasinating ways, not. So I liked this picture.