Amit Dhuga’s new short film will keep you on the edge of your seat for the entire length of the film. It begins with a couple returning home from a pleasant night out. They joke around, they tease each other. They seem like any young couple in a modest condo apartment just starting out in life. But something’s been bothering Akshay.
I usually watch films without knowing much of anything about them. I do this intentionally so that I won’t have any preconceptions or expectations when I watch. In the case of Prisoner, I was genuinely shocked to discover that Akshay (played by Dhuga himself) is running away from life as a member of a brutal South Asian gang. I was also surprised that this chipper fellow was a stone cold hitman. I was even more surprised at what happens to his lovely girlfriend Sukhmani when his brother cousin Mavi catches up with Akshay at his apartment.
We learn that Akshay and Sukhmani are hiding out after Akshay decided to leave his life of crime behind. It’s not clear if he turned ‘state’s witness’ and the police never make an appearance in the film. He just seems to have fled and assumed another identity in the hope that his former gangsters would not be able to find him.
When they do find him, though, they don’t just want revenge. They want Akshay to return to the fold. They have new things for him to do. After what happens to Sukhmani, it’s hard to believe they could ever expect him to do anything except seek revenge or die trying, but that is what his awful brother cousin Mavi expects. As the film progresses, we’re treated to one riveting action sequence after another.
The acting here is great, especially in the case of Alka Gahlot, who plays Sukhmani. She’s only in the first part of the film, but she is absolutely believable in this difficult role. Mavi, played by Arsh Khehra, is very easy to despise and is quite astonishing in his cold bloodedness.
The film was shot in only a few settings, but it reveals a world that few in Canada or anywhere else know much about: South Asian gangs in Canada. In telling this story, Dhuga is unquestionably adding a voice that is both diverse as well as engaging to the Canadian media landscape. We can only hope that Dhuga tells more of these stories and that there might be a Canadian/South Asian version of The Wire in the works. It would be truly fascinating to know more about the day to day operations of these types of gangs and how they are similar and how they differ from the much more familiar Italian gangsters and, at this point, African American gangs in the United States.
One possible difference that jumps out at the audience is the religious dimension of the these gangsters. There is a religious icon in Akshay and Sukhmani’s apartment and they both pray to it. This isn’t so surprising in Sukhmani’s case. She seems like a nice, law-abiding young woman (although she seems quite comfortable living with an ex-hitman). But in the case of Akshay and the other gangsters, this seems quite odd. Dhuga draws attention to this practice by showing the characters praying and there is an image of this religious figure in the opening sequence. On the other hand, we’ve seen Italian mafiosi praying to Mary in the past, embodying the same bizarre contradiction.
One thing that Dhuga, who wrote, stars in and directed the film, does well is that he does not in any way glorify the life of mobsters. This is, I believe, one of the great shortcomings of Martin Scorsese films such as Good Fellas. As someone who is married to an Italian and who is somewhat familiar with the extent to which organized crime has held Italy back as a country, it is refreshing when creators show the life of crime for what it is: brutal, ugly and devastating to everyone around it.
The title, in fact, says it all. All of those who are connected with organized crime are prisoners and, try as they might, they can never really escape the life.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.