The fuzzy line between justice-seeking and vengeful vigilantism is by now a common staple of the crime thriller, casting a dark shadow of moral ambiguity over even the most righteous crusades. Jonathan Millet’s “Ghost Trail” takes a mostly conventional approach to this blueprint, in which a protagonist loses their head (and their humanity), but it offers a novel context: the Syrian refugee crisis.
Hamid (a hypnotizing Adam Bessa), a former literature professor, was imprisoned and tortured under the authoritarian Assad regime — which was toppled in 2024, with the end of the 13-year presidency of Bashar al-Assad. We meet the somber Hamid in Strasbourg — at the border of France and Germany — scouring refugee centers and questioning other Syrian refugees about the figure in a blurry photograph, whom he claims is a relative.
Bessa’s brooding performance, which conveys devastating inner struggles without appearing clichéd, adds to the mystery of this first act. Millet keeps his cards close, slowly and inventively revealing the stakes. From the point-of-view of a computer game, in which a soldier runs aimlessly around a desert battlefield, we hear Hamid conversing in code with other users whom we soon realize are members of a clandestine group seeking to bring down Syrian war criminals in hiding. Though Hamid has never seen his torturer’s face, he knows his smell and voice — and he’s convinced that a man studying at the nearby university (Tawfeek Barhom) is the same guy.
The cat-and-mouse game, which involves Hamid tracking his suspect throughout campus, plays out in a relatively low-key manner, with the film relying on Bessa (and eventually, an eerie Barhom) to deepen the survivor’s dilemma. Hamid’s calls with his mother, who is living in a refugee camp in Beirut, and his hapless flirtations with another Syrian refugee working at a laundromat, remind him that he’s meant to start a new life in Europe. He has this in common with Barhom’s student, which adds a provocative, more cerebral undercurrent to the film’s portrait of modern immigration. What is lost by forgetting the past? What is gained?
Ghost Trail
Not rated. In Arabic, French, English and Turkish with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters.
The post ‘Ghost Trail’ Review: A Cat and Mouse Thriller appeared first on New York Times.
