Movies like Rule Breakers are some of my most frustrating. Rule Breakers is about a group of people we NEVER see on the big screen, with a great story to tell. And yet, the failings behind the camera neuter the truly inspirational stuff we see in front of it. I dig your heart Angel Studios, now work on that brain behind the scenes.
The story is about Roya Mahboob (Nikohl Boosheri), an amazing woman in her own right. She trained herself to be a computer whiz in Herat Afghanistan despite Taliban banning of her education, and rose to the heights of the country’s technical elite. Instead of just moving away and cashing in, she stays, opting to pass down what she learned to the next generation. Mahoob finds 4 gifted girls like herself (Amber Afzali, Nina Hosseinzadeh, Sara Malal Rowe, and Mariam Saraj), and uses robotics competitions to help spread her powerful message to more people.
I can see the dozens of great places to take this story. We can go full sports movie, but with robots. We can go Roya Mahboob character study, using her in between 2 generations of Afghans. We can do an Oscar bait girl power movie. Or we can even go science thriller like the Martian. A competent writer and director would have chosen one of these paths and streamlined the story thematically. This movie throws it ALL in the blender, leaving the audience in a whirlwind of random scenes, too directly written (should we go to the competition? Yes we should go to the competition. Who talks like that?!), inartfully stitched together . The best example is the opening 30 minutes, which this movie has a flashback to cover the checkpoints of Roya’s upbringing. A better film would have cut that flashback entirely cause it’s not part of the story of the robotics team, or used it later in the film as an effective character development piece we can learn about our leading lady. Instead, it’s there to inject unnecessary stakes on a film that has innate compelling ones the storytellers choose to overlook.
And yet, all these women are so easily rooted for the movie overcomes its shortcomings. The American moviegoing audience knows about the Taliban and Afghanistan in general, so to see these women overcome those odds despite the sheer amount of obstacles put in their way can only be interpreted as heroic. And if you keep beating up a hero and watching them fail, the minute they succeed, you can’t help but swell with happiness. Plus, despite people’s opinions of Angel Studios, at least they’re putting Afghani women front and center in one of their films, something no major studio would ever attempt, and frankly a joy to see on my end, especially these Afghan Dreamers.
I did worry since Rule Breakers is set in 2018, what happened to these girls after the 2021 Taliban retakeover. Fortunately, this film is a story of happy endings for everyone, well deserved happy endings. And, one of the most bizarre, out of left field cameos I could have ever seen coming, that will make you wonder why Angel decided to bring in THIS person to their movie. Dream on I guess.