The Iran Job

First things first, the film was really entertaining. The people who made it were able to see where the story was and chase after it, my original plan had been to watch the initial 20 min of the film and leave the rest for another day but before I knew it I was near the end of the movie; and that can't be said about most films nowadays!

The reason why I didn't give it a higher score is due to some national facts being wrong about Iran, apart from displaying Chris, the basketball player travelling to Iran, as a hero among iranian sheep, which having met many iranians during my life I strongly believe it couldn't have been further away from the truth. Had they left the judging aside and just shown things the way they are, so that the audience can make up their own mind the film might have just been that much better off.

I'd never heard of "The Iran Job" but when I saw it listed on a Roku channel, I was immediately intrigued. A former US college basketball player spending a season in Iran??? As a lifelong hoops fan and former newscaster (I got out at the right time), I couldn't resist. As I write this two years later, I've now watched it three times and undoubtedly will watch it again. It is that good.

Short summary: Kevin Sheppard played guard at Jacksonville University, the school that sent Hall of Famer Artis Gilmore to the NBA. The 6-foot Sheppard averaged 13.5 and 16.1 points his last two seasons for the Dolphins before embarking on a peripatetic pro career that took him to 15 teams in several countries from Australia to Cuba to Israel between 2003 and his 2015 retirement. He was a good player who represented his native U.S. Virgin Islands in the Pan-American Games and other international tournaments. Sheppard already had performed for 11 teams over six years when he arrived in Shiraz, Iran in 2008, but this would be a totally different experience.

Sheppard is expected to lift an first-year team to their league playoffs, a rarity in basketball anywhere, while adjusting to a Muslim nation ruled by clerics who run a tight ship, to say the least. Iran was just months away from the so-called Persian Spring when this was filmed, creating (in a sense) a what-is-to-come backdrop that hindsight can afford. If you're a basketball fan, you'll see the frustration Kevin feels playing with teammates with physical talent who haven't developed toughness or basketball sense yet. a.s. Shiraz plays in a gym in front of crowds of 3,000 or so on some night and it's clear that Kevin is their best player. Regarding that part of the story, the younger players improve and start winning enough to challenge for a playoff spot after all. I was entertained and as long as you're not expecting the NBA, you'll enjoy it.

What made this doc stand out for me, however, were the three young women who befriended Kevin early in the season. They were all distinct from each other as people, but they were all intelligent and perceptive people who understood what their societal role was in Iran. While they lived with it to varying degrees, they all wanted better for themselves. These were the kinds of spirits who were at the heart of the Green Movement, which ultimately challenged the mullahs openly in 2009 as a protest of the country's recent presidential election but were eventually quelled.

I started watching this out of curiosity from a basketball sense and even if that was the only contex I got out of it, I'd still think it was worth the time. It was what was happening AWAY from the gym that makes "The Iran Job" a superb documentary interpolating sports with a nation mere months before its biggest political uprising since 1979, when a revolution changed it from a monarchy to a theocracy.

I gave this nine stars because not everyone likes basketball AND international politics (some may consider one topic or the other a distraction) but if you have interest in both, it's definitely worth a ten-star rating.

I am making comments on this film in reaction to a previous review I saw which completely slammed it on very little basis. Firstly, I didn't think the 3 Iranian women in the documentary came across as having "no other worries other than becoming an actress or getting married" - anything but - they were strong women prepared to speak up about the political situation in Iran and the position of women. I'm not surprised they are in trouble with the authorities and my one criticism of the film makers is that they effectively encouraged them to reveal their identities in one scene on the understanding that the film was not going to be seen by those inside Iran. The most important outcome of the film for me was Kevin's (The US basketball player's) comment that he now thought he understood and respected the point of women on a deeper level since knowing these women in Iran.

Iranians in the film didn't come across as "hopeless idiots" nor did Iranian culture as "shallow and ridiculous". I wonder if we saw the same film really? A clue to this hopelessly negative review, however, might be the reviewer's statement: "It was unfortunate that I wasn't informed about this movie's exceptionally low quality beforehand, so I figured I do my share of informing those who haven't spent their time and money on it yet". I'm always wary of people who look to be "informed" of a film's low quality beforehand - who would do the informing? Someone with exactly the same views as yourself, I suppose. Most people prefer to make their own minds up.

Also, by the way, it is a difficult, if not totally unfair, task to compare a fictionalised blockbuster Hollywood drama like "Argo" with a very small budget documentary like "The Iran Job". Personally, I admire Argo as an exceptional film but you only have to know a few Iranians to know how controversial Argo is to them. Many regard the portrayal of the Iranian characters in it as just as stereotypically idiotic as you claim those in the Iran Job to be.

I think basketball is a beautiful and yet complicated game. Iran, at least to my western eyes, is an even more beautiful and infinitely more complicated country. This film is a very simple and sweet glimpse and people who cross over the borders surrounding basketball and Iran.

Just as Kevin Sheppard is not a monumental spokesman for all of the United States, the three sisters cannot capture the thousands of years of Iran/Persian in the past, nor the millions of people living there today.

But the human interest stories in this film are what draw us in on a personal level, Obama's inauguration and the election of Ahmadinejad over Moussavi take place while Kevin joins the Shiraz team in this film. I'm not sure how many "critics" here had they been filmed during those two events would have eloquently captured the moment. Intead I found the dinner when Kevin goes to the house of the Father of the three sisters to be more captivating.

That man, who says nothing on camera during the film, to me was the most fascinating character. Raising three strong women, balancing his belief in them and his faith in Islam, what a story must lie beneath the few moments we spend with them all. Kevin's gesture to politely pass on the head of the table setting at the dinner table was a nice moment of individual ambassador work. But even that scene is tinged with some sadness and misunderstanding as the Mother recaps her surprise that her guests did not stay for hours of fruit, nuts and conversation after the meal.

This film felt like meeting some people in fortuitous circumstances, maybe on a vacation retreat, or in the US at jury duty, where you get a glimpse of meaningful private moments in a mostly public setting. I think I'll wonder about the people on this film here, as I would for such "strangers" I encounter who temporarily break past the estrangement.

Two thoughts based on other comments I've read here. One, the sister Elaheh I don't think had a crush on Kevin so much as she did on the camera. Like many a good actress, her desired vocation, she knew the most important leading man for her is the lens. That being said, the lead-in to a Monday meeting with a potential suitor is set up and then dispatched with nary a follow-up, likely her wishful beau may have been rightfully jealous of the camera wanting to hold his intended in its gaze even while he did the same. Who knows? Also I've seen questions about Zoran, the seven footer from Serbia who does seem a veritable gentle giant. Effectively a migrant worker, away from his own family and young son, apparently in his 30's and it is alluded to his having been through the worst of the war in his homeland. It's almost as if he knows that the story of Kevin, and the sisters and their countries would not fit into this film, much less his own.

The simple truth of this film, that people interacting with each other in person, even with a disparity of background and a possible lack of communication somehow figure out their overwhelming similarities.

I had a very hard time watching the movie "The Iran Job" last night.

In fact, I was ashamed of myself for ending up in it's screening. It was a disastrous work by so called Iranian-Americans who's understanding of Iran is limited to Ghormeh Sabzi and pictures of Isfahan's mosques, as well as American's who choose to work on Iranian related works, just because it's trendy these days.

It was unfortunate that I wasn't informed about this movie's exceptionally low quality beforehand, so I figured I do my share of informing those who haven't spent their time and money on it yet.

The Iran Job's presentation leads the _uninformed_ viewer to believe that: - Iranian men are hopeless idiots. - Iranian women have no other worries other than becoming an actress or getting married. - Iran is a ruin and a random American basketball player has it all figured out. - Iranian culture is shallow and ridiculous.

Although the portrayal of a stupid public could be to some extend accurate for any subset of the _human population_, I am super annoyed that this movie is trying to make a statement that _Iranians_ are this way. And of course the movie tried to accompany this shallow portrayal with cliché and heart-warming presentation of Iranian's sense of humor and hospitality. Just so that the Iranian audience laughs and forgets that they are being immersed into an untrue and unjust presentation of their very selves.

I am surprised that someone from the Iranian community actually promoted this movie, supporting a new set of stereotypes to be spread out about us and our country. I'm also annoyed that this movie has fooled people on KickStarter and gained so much funding. This is a clear example of misusage of such new platforms.

We Iranians need to pay more attention to what we support. Just because a movie is related to Iran and shows pictures of Esfahan and the green revolution doesn't mean that it's something we should _pay_ for. I understand that we are all frustrated by what has been happening to us in the past couple of decades. But I do think that our ignorance and in on our words "Jav Giri" is pretty much one of the main reasons of all the difficulties we experience as a country.

Please do not go to this movie and support it further. It lacks artistic excellence (as opposed to Argo) and it paints a horribly incomplete picture of Iranians and the situation in Iran.

P.S. I have no idea why the movie was showing footage of Esfahan's mosques when it was telling the story in Shiraz -- I guess they were assuming people wouldn't notice.

P.P.S According to the co-producer, the three women in the movie are all in trouble. Two of them have left the country and one of them has been detained and cannot leave. When I asked the co-producer why they portrayed such a horrible picture of them in this film, she said: "the women have been asked whether they want their faces to be blurred out in the movie and they have agreed not to."