With its gritty charm and international intrigue, this iPhone-shot thriller is a fresh take on the spy genre.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Director Neil Burger (“Divergent,” “Voyagers,” “The Marsh King’s Daughter”) hits a totally different stride with the nifty, iPhone-shot, international thriller “Inheritance.” A kind of less deep-pocketed, female-led offspring of a Jason Bourne movie, “Inheritance” also has an intimacy and immediacy derived from the fact that director Burger could keep his camera in his pocket. This allowed Burger and lead actor Phoebe Dynevor (“Bridgerton”) to roam New York City and the streets of Cairo, Mumbai, and Seoul without attracting much attention while under the radar and capturing all the real activity around them. At the heart of the film is an exciting, low-budget, at times delightful chase scene in Mumbai involving a motorbike on which Dynevor’s Maya is a passenger and her driver is pursued by Interpol. It’s not quite the Paris chase scene in the first Jason Bourne outing of 2002. But it’s got some of the same grungy urgency. Burger also often shot scenes without permission, pretending to shoot social media, which gives the film a distinctive guerrilla vibe, not unlike its heroine.
Written by Burger and Olen Steinhauer (“All the Old Knives”), “Inheritance” begins with scenes of protagonist Maya shoplifting a bottle of tequila in NYC (only her first klepto move), going dancing by herself, getting picked up by a guy and then sitting on the stranger’s window ledge, apparently contemplating suicide. We soon learn that her mother, for whom she was caretaker, died after a long illness. Out of the blue, Maya and her older sister’s long-absent, hustler father Sam Welch (Rhys Ifans) shows up at the wake and offers to change Maya’s life by giving her a job her in his international real estate business. At a loss for what to do next, Maya takes a chance and agrees and soon finds herself ensnared in a cloak-and-dagger plot involving a small digital device with top-secret information about spies for the United States stored on it and a fortune in digitally stashed cash. Can you say MacGuffin?
The globe-trotting action takes Maya to Egypt, India, and Korea, where Burger and cinematographer Jackson Hunt, like Hitchcock before them, take full advantage of existing Wonders of the World (the Sphinx, anyone?). This is rogue movie-making, both on the run and with a brain in its head.
Dynevor, with her killer cheekbones and pouty sneer, is a convincing, aggrieved, self-destructive outsider as Maya, a young woman who discovers something she’s good at: being a badass. Watching her use Maya’s street smarts to stay one step ahead of the bad guys is a lot of fun, even if she doesn’t speak the language. Burger says he and his colleagues “stole” the film by shooting Dynevor on real planes in flight and trains en route and going through genuine passport controls. At one point, Maya steals the passport of someone who doesn’t really look like her. But manages to get away with using it.
Chameleon-esque Welshman Ifans is also a hoot as the truth-devoid father whom Maya sizes up perfectly before very long. He’s a thief and compulsive liar with a secret life in Korea. A final revelation in Seoul might be a literal bridge too far. But Ifans is almost as big an asset as the film’s star. A timely lesson in doing a lot with a little, “Inheritance” is a unique, jet-setting surprise.
‘Inheritance’
Rating: R for language and some sexual content/nudity.
Cast: Phoebe Dynevor, Rhys Ifans, Madj Eid
Director: Neil Burger
Writers: Burger, Olen Steinhauer
Running time: 101 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, Liberty Tree Mall, Methuen 20 and other suburban theaters
Grade: B+
Boston Movie News 