![]() ![]() It is also the case that, while the narrative works as a genre piece, it is not helped by the fact that as director Saleh is not always an adept storyteller. As such, it is certainly watchable, but Saleh's screenplay makes little of the potential dramatic development in Noredin's outlook and this is the more obvious because in this role Fares Fares (also an executive producer) proves a rather stolid presence: to the end he remains a decidedly unsympathetic protagonist. Instead, it stands or falls as a standard noirish thriller with many twists and turns. The setting undoubtedly adds a certain novelty here, but news of corruption in Egypt at the start of 2011 hardly comes as a revelation so the film gains no real weight from this. Later, however, Shafiq himself hires Noredin to find the dead woman's pimp, Nagy (Hichem Yacoubi), who is now regarded as the likely killer. Shafiq, initially unaware that he is one of two men seen leaving the dead woman's room by a Sudanese chambermaid named Salwa (Mari Malek), wants to deny his presence in the hotel (he is a married man) and the police are soon ordered to close down the case. This man is not only in charge of a major construction company but also a member of parliament described as a friend of President Mubarak. The incident of the title is the murder in the hotel of a well-known singer who is the mistress of an important citizen, Hatem Shafiq (Ahmed Selim). However, their real purpose is to highlight the fact that later in that very same month the protests against the authorities in Tahrir Square were to erupt and would make world headlines. ![]() ![]() At intervals, dates are written up on screen to indicate the passing of the days. In any case, our investigator, Noredin Mostafa played by Fares Fares, is not a private eye but an unscrupulous policeman ready to take pay-offs and the setting is Cairo in 2011. It is a piece that carries echoes of film noir from the 1940s (the central figure makes his own investigation into a crime) but there are some additional touches towards the end more reminiscent of the dark thrillers of the 1970s. Although born in Stockholm, Tarik Saleh's ancestry is Egyptian as well as Swedish and that probably explains what led this writer/director to make The Nile Hilton Incident. ![]()
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