 I haven't seen a movie this good about Stockholm syndrome since Beauty and the Beast. Hi to our distributor, actually it is, I'm Corbin. Idiasha, are you okay? Idiasha? You Idiasha? Uh, and please follow us on Instagram and Twitter! Come on down, sit down, sit down! It's so cheesy. It is. Um, and today we are doing a movie review. Movie review time! We did, uh, highway. Lash has been requested for an awful long time, starring our favorite, Ali Abad. We are the official Ali Abad fanboys. And if you are asking, why aren't we doing another Ali Abad film? I took a poll on Twitter. If you want to say... I put it right here for you, because I took a screenshot. It's not just us folks. I didn't decide it, it's not just us. I looked it up to you. Yeah, and look what you did. Thank you though. Uh, but yes, we, uh, we watched Highway, which obviously, of course, stars Ali Abad, and I, uh, I didn't get the other guy's name. I would tell you right now though. It starts with a Z. No, it doesn't. Randip. Randip Huda. Huda. Uh, and it was directed by... There's the Z. I knew there was a Z in there somewhere. Emtiaz Ali. Emtiaz Ali? Emtiaz Ali. Okay. She did, uh, Jabli Met... He did. Sorry, he did Jabli Met and Rockstar as well, which we have not seen in the trailer. Correct. Correct. But, um, yes. And so you want to read the synopsis real quick? Right before her wedding. A young woman finds herself abducted and held her ransom. As the initial days pass, she begins to develop a strange bond with her kidnapper. That's a pretty good synopsis. Thank you. So, uh, please, what did you think? Start it off. Um, you might be surprised. You might be surprised. Didn't like it. Why? Uh, there's a lot of things about it I didn't like. Okay. What I do like, I'll start with, because I always like to start with the things that I liked about it. Okay. I liked the premise. I think the premise is extremely strong. Okay. As far as the flow of what the story could be. Gotcha. Um, I also, um, I like... Uh, I, obviously, we love Alia, but as much as I like moments that she had, this was the first time I've seen her work, and it makes sense because this was one of her first films. Mm-hmm. And we've seen some of her later work, which is several years later, and her maturity and her growth as an actor has improved dramatically for me. Okay. Um, so what did you think? What did you not like about the film, though? Uh, there's a lot I didn't like. Okay. Um, I, I, I, first of all, they left out two of the most important elements of Stockholm Syndrome. Mm-hmm. Um, and you mentioned the film, didn't you just mention Beauty and the Beast? Yeah. Yeah, I did. That's a great Stockholm Syndrome film, as is King Kong. Yeah. Um, I think there's, there's several that I can think of that are really, really good. And what it missed, there's basically, there's several elements, but the primary elements that were missed for me are the element of the kidnapped person finding something in the other person that they can relate to that was completely unexpected to them when it began, and they begin to develop a compassion for that person early in the stages of their connection with them, and they see a justification for what they're doing as a kidnapper. Um, I, I saw that happen later and it felt very forced. It didn't feel like that happened naturally, which is another thing for me was script. I had some challenges with the script and the directing in terms of kind of her, her Stockholm Syndrome was more internally revelatory when she's talking out loud about, I don't know why I'm enjoying this and I don't know why I'm talking so much. And versus it being connected to the person of her kidnapper. Okay. So from a psychological aspect, I didn't see a genuine depiction of Stockholm Syndrome. I think you're completely not really wrong and I think you completely misunderstood the film itself. I may have. Because it's not completely a Stockholm Syndrome film. And I know that. Because it's not just, that's literally not what it's about. The reason, oh, this is a great idea I'm having. Um, the reason that she fell in love with, well not, I don't even think she fell in love with him. The reason that she found a liking to him is because he was the first guy in her life really that even though he abducted her, he wasn't trying to have sex with her. He wasn't trying to make her something like confine her. Right. He wasn't trying to do any of that. And so that's the reason she took a liking to him because she's had such a terrible and awful life. Her mother is an awful person. Her uncle is clearly a terrible person. Yeah, her uncle is obviously a terrible human being. But her father really, I don't think was around. He's some big shot, rich guy, good brands of companies. I'm guessing he wasn't around. Right, right, right. And then obviously her fiance is just a complete nutter dickhead. Right, instead of saving her, he's like, I told you, this is what was going to happen. Right, right. You're getting kidnapped. Told you so. But that's the reason she started to fall in love. And it was this movie, I think, was actually more about the girl finding herself. And it was about Stockholm Syndrome. So I think you're all your stuff. One, I think this is my favorite Alibak performance. So I don't know what the hell you're talking about. You're kidding me. No, because everything that you hated, I thought was brilliant. So let me take you to a spot where I am the most, where I saw her work the most. When she was talking to herself? No, no, no. Where I saw her working the most was the last scene. Oh, by the way, we didn't say this. All of our reviews have spoilers. So if you haven't seen Highway... Idiot. Yeah, so. Watching. The final scene at home where she's confronting her uncle and everybody else, where she's that climactic thing. I saw her fighting to find where she was emotionally and pushing places rather than just being. I saw a young actor trying to do the scene as best she could and her working is very good. But it did not... I don't agree at all. I think she was trying to... The reason it looked like she was finding is because she was feeling so much in that moment. She had just lost a guy that she had started feeling for. She was just kidnapped and so that's the whole thing. And then she's confronting her family for the first time in her life. So she's never talked to her family or anybody like this. Absolutely. Which is all the monologues she had. I'm always a very polite person. Right. She's doing all this stuff because it's an inner monologue. She's never actually had... One, she didn't have anybody to talk to which is why she was talking to herself. Right. And then she was talking everything out because one, she was also going a little crazy. But she was talking it out because she didn't actually know what she was doing. She's never done any of this before. She's never gone out. And then she was starting to like it. And so she was like, Why the hell am I liking this? I don't understand it. And so everything that you think is bad I think is actually a brilliant performance, a move, a decision by the director. I thought this was an absolute gem of a film. And I'm... I think you were judging it way too hard. I think you were looking for stuff. No, I really wasn't. Yeah, I think you are. No, no, no, I really wasn't looking for stuff. I think you're looking for stuff to not like in this film. No, why would I do that? I don't know why you're doing it. Why would I look for something to go wrong? I'm rooting for her all the time. I don't know why you're doing it, but you're doing it. No, it's my genuine observation of the fact that what I saw was a young actress doing her best with material that wasn't strong, a director that didn't guide her. And she was forcing some things at times, not all the time. But there were some times where she was forcing herself to portray something rather than being in the moment with it. I didn't believe when she was confronting her uncle that she was going through the multifaceted layers of that kind of a traumatic moment in front of family as well as the loss of a loved one. Why does it need to be this big thing? There's nothing big. She literally went through it all with the guy. So now she's just like, hey, go fuck yourself. That's what it is. That's how I would do it. So no, you can't just say no, that's because that's not how you would do it. You would start crying. Not everybody is like that. No, I wasn't saying that she needs to be crying. I wasn't saying that she needs to do it like I would do it. I'm saying I didn't believe her. I would completely do it the exact same way because not everybody feels in the exact same way you do. No, absolutely, they don't have to. And she doesn't care about these people anymore. So she's not going to go like this big, do this big ordeal about the guy when she's already kind of gone through it. She's already decided. They've trained her. They've done all this stuff. She's like, go fuck yourself. I don't want to be with y'all anymore. No, and it's a whole thing. I'm not even saying, I'm not saying she needed to, that her emotional palette needed to be any different. I'm not talking about the emotional plane she was in. I'm talking about her capacity to tap into the emotions in a real place and present it to me as an actual happening by a being in the moment. I saw Alia working. No. Yeah, I would love to know if she felt that way as well. I felt like she was into material that was one of her greatest performances by everybody. I don't know, not everybody loved her performances. I've read reviews of it. No, literally, this is everybody says this is probably one of her best performances. This is one of my, this is my least favorite performance of hers. I think her work in Uda Punjab and Razi and Gully Boy are, I think you can see a trajectory in her work because we've now seen quite a bit of her stuff and this is the earliest thing we've seen. This is like her fourth film. And I saw someone who was attempting to portray some things that she herself didn't have an emotional connectivity to and rather than actually be in that moment with something like substitution or any other thing she could use as an artist, she was showing us what she could do with what she had. It reminds me of when I did a play and I had to be, this is when I was in high school and I had to be in love with somebody. And the director of the play was saying to me, let's do this, let's do that. And then the director just came over to me and said, have you ever been in love before? And I said, no. Said, okay. And she was trying to help me wrap my head around how to portray what it's like to be in love and I just wasn't able to get there. That's all I'm saying. I saw a actor working with the best that she had, which her working is better than a lot of people's best. But for me and for my standards of what I think she can do, I think incredibly way too critical. And I think you were looking for stuff because this was an amazing performance by Alia. I loved everything she did from the monologues that you seem to hate it. I loved. I thought that was a hatred. I think it was an amazing, because one, it was very different. Yeah, I don't see people doing that. No, I thought she did a, I actually think she did a really good job with monologues that I didn't like the writing of. What part of the writing didn't you like? I didn't particularly like, and I think you would agree with me, I didn't particularly like in those self-discovery monologues, the saying of a self-discovery monologue, so it's like in between a soliloquy and a monologue, just let me watch her develop into what she's going through. I don't need to hear her saying what she's realizing and she's realizing. I'd rather see her realizing it. That was literally the whole point of those. To tell us. No, no, to tell her. And tell us. No, she's talking to herself like a soliloquy. Yeah, so like it's literally for her. It was also for us. She was literally talking to herself because trying to figure out what she's going through in her mind. It is, you completely misunderstood this film. No, no, no. Yes, you did. Okay. You completely misunderstood this film because literally everything you're complaining about is what the intention was and it was a brilliant idea. The only thing I would agree with you about this film is that actually the other guy I saw working. Not her. No, I saw him working as well and they didn't have any chemistry. I didn't believe that they were inclined toward one another in a way that I cared about. Well, I don't think you're supposed to. Oh, really? No. You don't think that when he shot you should feel like Faye Ray watching King Kong die in her heartbroken that the guy who kidnapped her, you've seen a change and you have compassion for the guy. You don't think that was the intent? No, because it's still, he's one, he's still an awful person. He's a murderer. But the guy has literally Stockholm syndrome. And so you're supposed to feel bad that she feels so attached to this guy. No, no, no, no. In real Stockholm syndrome, you're supposed to with her have an emotional attachment to the kid now. Another thing that I think you misunderstood about this film, it's not all about the Stockholm syndrome. No, I know that. It's about her finding herself and she just happened to be there when she was finding herself. Yeah, but you can't deny the fact that part of the storyline was the fact that the two of them became interlinked because they had the Stockholm syndrome but you complained right at the beginning about how this is not exactly Stockholm syndrome. This is, which is why I don't think you actually understood the film. Well, no, if the film ends with her crying out his name, clearly she's, she felt for him. I'm not saying she didn't. In a way that's supposed to be indicative of Stockholm syndrome. I told you it's partly about Stockholm syndrome. It's not all about Stockholm syndrome. I didn't say it was all about Stockholm syndrome. I said the Stockholm syndrome aspect of it was hollow because they missed the key elements. Well, I think that's all you were looking for. No, because I was also looking for good acting. And you, it was in there. No, she was good most of the time. She was never great and he was hardly good for me most of the time which shocked me because I understand he's done theater and I don't know if it's because of the script or the directing or what took place but there were even moments like something as simple as this. There were moments where when she had her monologue with him and she's sharing the fact that her uncle had raped her repeatedly, right? I really was hoping that the director was going to just stay tight on her and leave us in that intimacy of moment with her so that we could just sit on it. But for whatever reason, the director decided to cut away several times into a separate angle that wasn't a two-camera shot because you could tell from continuity mistakes that it was separate takes for something that poignant and powerful emotionally, especially for a young actress, leave the camera on them so we get one singular performance and we don't lose the dynamics of what she's going through where you go to one side and the tear is gone or she's in a completely different emotional landscape because it's her second take. Those kinds of things were very distracting for me. Something's wrong with you. You're no longer allowed to be in there while you've got fan boy club. Well, I am because as you know, you're not allowed. There is no actor or artist who's higher than the art form. So there's no artist I love, including Daniel Day-Lewis. You know who's at the highest? Apparently, Rick. No, no. Even Daniel Day-Lewis? Even Daniel Day-Lewis when he does something that is a subpar for him and for the art form, there's no one above the art form. Nobody. And no one does it perfectly. Except Rick. He knows all. Apparently. Because I have an opinion different than yours. Performers. It's all about me. No. Rick just doesn't understand the film because he's a moron.