‘Seeking Haven For Mr Rambo’: Red Sea Review

Dir: Khaled Mansour. Egypt/Saudi Arabia. 2024. 102 mins

When tensions boil over between 30-year-old Cairo security guard Hassan (Essam Omar) and his bullish landlord Karem (Ahmed Bahaa), Hassan’s beloved dog Rambo steps up to defend his master. Nursing a bruised ego and bite marks on his privates, Karem demands that the dog be handed over. Hassan embarks on an urgent mission to find a safe place for his canine best friend but, in the process, he rediscovers his own self-respect. The theme of the bond between dog and emotionally stunted man as a means of personal growth is hardly a new one. Still, this feature debut from Khaled Mansour impresses, bringing a distinctively gritty flavour to its vision of lives on the fringes of working class Cairo.

A quality picture that announces Mansour as a notable talent in Egyptian independent filmmaking 

The film, which screens at the Red Sea Film Festival following its premiere in Venice’s Horizons Extra strand, shares some thematic DNA with Guan Hu’s Cannes Un Certain Regard prize-winner Black Dog. Both films feature men of few words who find a freeing kinship with their canine companion. Both unfold in cities that are in the process of change. Both, very appealingly, feature dogs riding in motorcycle sidecars (Mr Rambo gets the added bonus of his own little bike helmet). And while Mr Rambo lacks the star power that propelled Black Dog into arthouse cinemas and awards conversations, it’s a quality picture that announces Mansour as a notable talent in Egyptian independent filmmaking. Further festival play, and perhaps streaming platform interest, seems possible.

Mr Rambo, a leggy, grubby-white mongrel with a quizzical expression, is a beloved pet. The film opens on Hassan and Rambo enjoying a tussle with the dog’s favourite toy, a stuffed bunny; then we see them cooking together (“Fetch the potato sack,” says Hassan. Rambo returns with a hopeful expression and his food bowl.). Hassan carefully prepares eggs for the hound. His mother (Samaa Ibrahim) refers to Rambo as “the pampered one” but indulges both the dog and her son.

These moments of doggy domesticity are, we quickly realise, a brief respite from the precarious uncertainty of their life. Hassan’s mother has consulted a lawyer about the threat of eviction from Karem, who wants to extend the premises of his mechanics business. But Karem, all swagger and threat, is not the kind of man who seems likely to observe the legal niceties of the situation. Hassan, accompanying his mother to a meeting in Karem’s cockroach-riddled garage, sits mute, unable to find the words to fight their corner.

Words elude him once again, when, following the violent run-in with a drunken Karem, he parks his motorcycle and sidecar overnight and camps outside a cafe where he formerly worked alongside Asmaa (Rakeen Saad). Her delight in seeing him suggests a spark of romantic history, but the drama is elegantly underplayed. Mansour is not the kind of filmmaker to deliver a backstory with chunks of exposition, and Hassan is certainly not about to bare his heart. Instead, we capture glimpses of yearning in Saad’s delicate performance and Omar’s stony evasiveness.

Hassan, it becomes clear, is wounded by the abandonment of a father who simply walked out one day, never to return. And this deep-rooted emotional scar ties into his reluctance to hand over the dog to an uncertain fate at the hands of his landlord, even if it may secure them a little more time in their modest apartment. Recordings of happier days, with Hassan as a child offering to sing for his father, are a moving motif throughout the second half of the film, augmenting the sparse but effective use of music that largely consists of wistful accordion and guitar. Elsewhere, there’s an unpolished rawness to the photography that compliments the downbeat realism of the film’s depiction of Cairo’s nocturnal underbelly.