Saeed Azimi (Mehdi Bajestani) is a respected pillar of his community, a devout Shia Muslim and a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, with a loving family and a nasty secret: he lives a double life murdering sex workers whenever he thinks he can get away with it. Like the Yorkshire Ripper and countless other serial killers before him, he claims to be on a mission from God to cleanse the streets.
Hoping to bring him to justice is plucky investigative reporter, Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), who is frequently thwarted in her attempts to do her job by stomach-churning sexism from colleagues and random members of the public, some of which is formally legitimised and some of which is more subtly ingrained and socially mandated.
The film overall feels frustratingly muddled in its attempts to stage a murky cat-and-mouse game based on events in which real women lost their lives.
Given these elements, the stage ought to be set for an effective horror, blending elements of something like Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy with The Silence Of The Lambs, but it never quite works out that way. Despite Ebrahimi’s best efforts, Rahimi’s reporter feels underwritten. Conversely, the film spends endless time with Saeed, lingering carefully on his crimes, perhaps in an attempt to immerse us in his perspective, but to what end is unclear.
As a film based on real events, it’s certainly disturbing to see how supportive local community leaders were — apparently there were a lot of people who agreed with the spirit of the killer’s vendetta against sex workers — and scenes teasing out this kind of context are intermittently compelling. But the film overall feels frustratingly muddled in its attempts to stage a murky cat-and-mouse game based on events in which real women lost their lives — a fact which would seem to demand an extra level of clarity and attention to the victims’ perspective. True crime doesn’t have to be tasteless, but this particular effort leaves a slightly queasy taste in the mouth.