Mohamad Aldokhei as Fahad in Mandoob [Metis Films]

MANDOOB (NIGHT COURIER)
Directed by Ali Kalthami
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆☆

MANDOOB is a fascinating watch: set in Riyadh, it offers an uncensored glimpse into the Saudi capital.

It shows how the country is changing, and the fractures between tradition and modernity.

But above all, in Mohamad Aldokhei you have a compelling actor sharing a unique story.

Saudi Arabia has had an uncomfortable relationship with cinema down the years, and the society’s inequality and strict custom-based way of life – including the sexism and homophobia – has rightly made it a pariah. It means your average filmgoer might have a bunch of preconceptions about life in Riyadh – and what adds to this film’s interest is the revealing and honest approach it takes.

Riyadh appears to be a city of stark contrasts, from the wealthy who break rules in the seclusion of their own homes to the gig economy workers who are ruthlessly exploited.

Fahad (Mohamad Aldokhei) is the troubled lead, a man with the expectations of peers and family bearing down on him, and one that just gets worse when he loses his job. His frustrations are immediate – he loses his rag with a customer and then assaults his manager. It has a sense of Michael Douglas’s Falling Down about it. He has to meet his father’s medical bills and keep up appearances, so he gets a job as a mandoob – which translates as night courier – and shuttles through the crowded Riyadh streets, delivering for an Uber-style company.

Fahad has a side hustle: delivering illicit caches of alcohol to the rich. And the opportunity to steal a bootleggers stash is too good to resist, leading to serious consequences.

Fahad represents a man in a changing world he doesn’t fit into or understand, a man whose gender has taught him to behave in certain ways – but not have the wherewithal to see the straitjacket he is crippled by.

There is the woman who offers him friendship but he thinks must fancy him. His sister is doing well, setting up her own business, and Fahad takes it on himself to muck in when help is not necessary.

And you can’t help but be sucked into the heady, dark atmosphere: one scene of a group of men hunched round a table, scooping up rice and lamb with their fingers is so rich and so well laid out that you can taste the food they are consuming.