Furies

Furies by name, furious by nature, this full-bore Lebanese heist flick, executive-produced by George Clooney under his Smokehouse production label, brings Safdies and Tarantino energy to the streets of Beirut circa 2022. It even conjures memories of Thelma & Louise in its feminist, rage-against-the-machine story of two women sticking it to an unjust system. 

A one-first-job crime thriller, it has the madcap feel of a true story. But director Rami Kodeih, who co-writes with his wife Nora Mariana, borrows only the real-life backdrop of a Beirut stricken by the fallout from the 2019 economic crisis, daily powercuts, even some latent ill-will dating bac to the Lebanese Civil War. The banks aren’t just not lending money, they won’t give customers their own savings. Single mum Maro (Rym Mroueh) needs funds to help her younger sister Dalia (Maria Nakouzi) with her cancer treatment. Instead of a George Bailey to calm everyone down at the counters, she has to deal with the dismissive bank manager who waves her away as he scarfs down his lunch.

Obviously, no half-decent thriller is going to let this stand. The bank – and its patronising manager – are about to face an ungodly amount of payback as the two sisters hatch a plan to break into the vault and make off with money for meds, and some on the side to pay their two accomplishes: ageing war veteran Sunshine (Issam Bou Khaled) and angry, erratic Hamza (Hasan Akil), who unbeknownst to the sisters is in debt to a vicious mob boss.

It has the madcap feel of a true story

Tonally, Furies is a film of two halves – and both of them work. The opening stretch plays out in a loose, irreverent register as the siblings puff on spliffs, play dress-up games with Maro’s young son, and match each other’s punky but strung-out energy. But the gravity of the situation and the unfairness of a financial crisis where only working people seem to suffer is kept in focus, too. Dalia is trying sex work to help ends meet; Maro flogs her jewelry. But there’s no way out in a world where they’re even getting fleeced by the pharmacist.

The film really takes off when the plan comes together, providing an outlet for all that pent-up tension that Kodeih exploits with a sweaty, Rififi-esque heist sequence and a final stretch that escalates the stakes in pacy, propulsive ways. The two leads are excellent, dispensing salty putdowns to anyone who annoys them (‘May your men suffer the worst diseases’) and finding moments of connection in the quieter moments.

Not that there are many of those. Clooney lent his name to this thriller as exec-producer for good reason. The Out of Sight and Ocean’s Eleven star knows a banging heist movie when he sees one.

Furies premiered at the Venice Film Festival.