Swedish-Lebanese actor Fares Fares assumes the director’s chair for the first time for A Day and a Half (now streaming on Netflix), a hostage drama he co-wrote, and loosely based on a true story the filmmaker read about more than a decade ago. American audiences may recognize Fares for his supporting roles in Rogue One and Zero Dark Thirty, as well as TV series Westworld and The Wheel of Time. Here, he plays the police officer who finds himself driving cross-country with a desperate man holding his wife and child at gunpoint. It’s a simple and effective thriller, and a rock-solid debut behind the camera for Fares.

The Gist: Artan (Alexej Manvalov) looks nervous but determined. He walks into a doctor’s office and demands to see Louise (Alma Poysti), his estranged wife. She works there. The receptionist resists accommodating him – until he pulls out a gun. He storms through the office and finds Louise as nurses, doctors and patients fret. Soon, the cops arrive outside. Lukas (Fares) assesses the situation. The task force can’t be here for three hours – too long. He looks up at the office window and sees a sign: one person can come up, naked. He lets out a weary sigh and we try to read his face: Is he comfortable being a hostage negotiator? Has he ever done this before? Is anyone else going to handle this? No. No one else is going to handle this.

There’s a knock on the office door. It’s Lukas, in his underwear, holding pants and a shirt. Artan lets him in, allows him to dress. Lukas asks to see what’s in Artan’s backpack; Artan angrily insists he’s not carrying a bomb, and rants about how people always assume he’s a terrorist because he’s an immigrant. He hands Lukas his backpack. Lukas looks in it and hands it back and gets on with listening to Artan’s demands. He wants an unmarked car with tinted windows in 15 minutes. They’re going to drive to Louise’s parents’ home so Artan can see their daughter. Cops knock on the door and Lukas answers. He tells them Artan’s demands as one cop holds a notebook. “Convicted of assault,” it reads. “Custody battle.” That’s it. In a nutshell.

Of course, it’s much more complicated than those five words. Artan gets his car. A sheet covers the back window, the best police could do on such short notice. Lukas gets behind the wheel while Artan forces Louise into the backseat at gunpoint. The couple’s backstory is incoherent – not a surprise, since it’s being conveyed in bits and pieces by intensely stressed-out people. Artan and Louise argue. Something about parental neglect, and Artan spending three months in prison, which he doesn’t believe he deserved. Lukas listens. Tries to keep them calm. Speaks reasonably and clearly. A handful of police cars and motorcycles escort them down the road. Occasionally, Lukas communicates with another officer. Lukas, and we, try to piece together the story; when they reach her parents’ home, it’ll become clearer, but also far more complex. And we soon wonder, is Lukas out of his depth? He and Artan have been engaging in a subtle competition for control. Is Lukas trained for this situation? Not sure. Hard to tell. But he’s doing the best that he can.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: My favorite hostage negotiation drama: Spike Lee’s underrated Inside Man. Denzel!

Performance Worth Watching: Manvalov and Fare are equally strong here, keenly finding the soft points in the screenplay and enriching it with their performances.

Memorable Dialogue: A fascinating exchange occurs after Artan becomes annoyed at Lukas’ plainspoken demeanor.

Artan: Been in many of these situations?

Lukas: No. But I know where misunderstandings can lead.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: On the surface, A Day and a Half is an exercise in drawn-out tension – it’s a 95-minute drama consisting of a single stripped-down scenario. It’s suspenseful and worrisome: What is Artan capable of? He threatens to kill Louise and then himself, but do we believe that? As we get to know him as more than just an antagonist, we’re not sure he has it in him. Yet some people aren’t defined by a lifetime of rationality, but rather, a brief moment when they lost control. That’s where the seed of fear finds its purchase – in uncertainty.

Fares and Peter Smirnakos’ screenplay feeds on that suspenseful setup, which, along with some sturdy, naturalist direction, keeps us emotionally engaged and absorbed in the drama. But this isn’t just a what’s-going-to-happen/I-hope-it-isn’t-a-tragedy movie. Leavened into the subtext is an exploration of the subtleties of human communication. Hostage negotiation is as much an art as a science; we assume Lukas is at least somewhat familiar with proper methods, and improvisation and intuition is likely part of it. He’s clearly not an expert, but most of us don’t have the frame of reference to determine whether he’s handling the situation with the appropriate tenor. We can only lean on logic and common sense, which in a hostage drama like this, tends to be shaky ground. There has to be times when reverse psychology or counterintuitive measures are necessary, right? 

Note how Lukas emphasizes clarity and repetition while communicating with Artan and his fellow police. Inevitably, he shares a little about himself – the characters are stuck in a car for most of the movie – and says his marriage fell apart because they “stopped listening” to each other. Later, he backtracks and reveals that infidelity was a factor, but that isn’t the root cause of broken relationships – it’s a symptom of deeper malaise. And here we begin to draw parallels between Lukas and Artan that exist in the gray areas between protagonist and antagonist. There isn’t good and evil in this story, but rather, believable characters with broken hearts.

Logic doesn’t always rule in this story, however. When the plot takes us to Louise’s parents at the halfway mark, characters react in a manner that defies reason, especially in a situation where the person with the gun should dictate how everyone reacts. The overwrought, melodramatic scene functions to artificially complicate the drama, stirring up ideas about prejudice and parenthood that enrich the story with relevancy, but taints the film with a series of off-key dramatic notes. But otherwise, A Day and a Half is a taut, engrossing drama that drills deep enough into the specificity of its characters and situation to turn up some universal assertions about the human condition.

Our Call: With A Day and a Half, Fares proves himself to be as strong behind the camera as he is in front of it. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.