In its description, “Inheritance” sounds like one of those films that revolves around tricks of its own making: a spy thriller shot entirely on an iPhone, with many scenes shown publicly without passes for added urgency and spontaneity. But this latest film from Neil Berger (“Divergent,” “Limitless,” “The Illusionist”), who co-wrote the screenplay with spy novelist Ollen Steinhauer, ultimately goes beyond mere novelty by having a smaller substance than you might expect. expected. For all its multinational sprawl and hints of high stakes, the film is ultimately a two-person drama about a daughter (Phoebe Dynevor) who discovers who her long-absent father (Rhys Ifans) is. What I Learned is bittersweet, but it’s also intensely satisfying enough to make this release, which hits theaters from IFC Films on Friday, feel like something more than just a low-budget action movie with familiar faces.
Maya (Dynevor) is introduced as a sullen young woman in Manhattan, who steals a bottle of liquor from a bodega before picking up a man at a club for some senseless sex. It takes a while before we realize the reason for her panic – she has spent most of the past year caring for her dying mother who has just died, leaving her grieving and rudderless. At the funeral, older brother Jess (Kirsty Bryan) whispers, “I can’t believe he came,” referring to their divorced father, Sam (Evans). He’s been MIA out of their lives for years, but now seems remorseful and remorseful, and seeks to make amends. To this end, he offers Maya an immediate lucrative job to help him attract “foreign buyers” to purchase high-end properties. She’s skeptical, but also desperate for some distraction, so she finds herself on the next plane to Cairo with her father.
Some of the questions he reluctantly answers along the way suggest that some of his “business” may involve laundering money for questionable figures. A few more (plus a glimpse of the fake ID in his passport) have him admitting that he “used to” do spy work from time to time. But things don’t really escalate until they have dinner at their arrival point. The father leaves the table for a moment and does not return, then calls his daughter and asks her to leave the restaurant immediately. As she does so, a battalion of law officers arrive, having been informed that Sam is inside. He seems to be in high demand by big-league players like Interpol (whose recurring face here, if fleeting, is “24” actor Nekar Zadegan), as well as shadier types.
While briefly in the hands of her best friend Khalil (Majd Eid), Maya receives another call – now her father is a captive, threatened with death by unknown kidnappers unless she can retrieve “something they paid for.” Something in the world of stolen state secrets, we eventually learn. After giving Khalil the chance, she takes a plane to New Delhi, then a train to Mumbai, then another plane to Seoul, where agents of all kinds pursue her. Meanwhile, the question of whose side Dad is on, or whether he’s told her the truth anythingbecomes more worrying.
Filmed without permits, the guerrilla production sees Maya running around well-chosen foreign territories – sometimes pursued on foot, in a taxi or on a motorbike – without the gunplay or physical stunts that typically highlight such… Action scenes. “Inheritance” is lively in its spooky aesthetics and handheld camerawork, but it’s never exciting or suspenseful. That’s okay, because our protagonist isn’t Jason Bourne. She is a young woman in over her head in a foreign land, where she has no language or other relevant skills, fumbling to respond to crises she has learned about mostly via mobile phone.
When it becomes clear how cynically it is being used, the real point becomes clear – it is not some sort of “vast international conspiracy”. Instead, this comes across as the kind of story where stubborn hopes that a ne’er-do-well parent will do the right thing just once end up confirming the worst fears. All the previous plots are actually a setup for climatic dialogues between father and daughter that are quiet and unpleasant but fully loaded with searing emotional payoff. To some extent, this echoes the influence of Dynevor’s last film, the toxic office romance Fair Play. The narrative context may be very different, but the orientation toward fireworks that burn bridges between people is similar.
The way the film envisions Maya is somewhat limited by her being a naïve pawn in a larger picture, but Dynevor effortlessly projects his screen presence to sustain this whole enterprise. Ifans, seen mostly at the beginning and end, magnifies his role by downplaying it—when Sam’s game is fully fleshed out, his constant insistence on gentle faux-honesty makes the pretense of paternal instinct all the more grotesque.
In addition to Jackson Hunt’s cinematography and Nick Caro’s urgent editing pace, the biggest stylistic contributors here are Paul Leonard Morgan’s electronic-leaning score and music supervisor Joe Rudge’s diverse collection of pre-existing tracks.