16/03 (2017)
½ — 16/03 (2017)
16/03 arrived in 2017 as a co-production between the UK and Iraq, emerging from two small outfits, Film Coolio and Baiboon Film Entertainment, with a runtime of two hours and a premise that, on paper at least, carries genuine weight. The film follows a Kurdish sniper whose family have been killed in chemical attacks, and who flees to the United Kingdom only to find himself entangled in a terrorist conspiracy. That tagline, "There is only one thing worse than Terrorism, Politics," signals the kind of provocation the film is reaching for: something urgent and politically pointed, set against the very real horrors that Kurdish communities have faced. The subject matter is not trivial. Chemical attacks on Kurdish populations are among the more harrowing chapters of recent history, and the refugee experience in Britain is a topic that cinema has wrestled with in ways both sensitive and clumsy. On that basis alone, 16/03 had every reason to exist.
The film was co-directed by Paul J. Lane and Danny Darren, with Darren also taking sole writing credit and the lead acting role. That combination of responsibilities concentrated in one person is not automatically a problem; plenty of writer-director-performers have made it work. But it does place an enormous burden on a production that appears to have had limited resources and, from what the credits suggest, a fairly modest infrastructure behind it. The co-direction arrangement is relatively unusual for a film of this scale, and it is worth noting that this appears to be a rare feature credit for both men rather than the work of seasoned genre veterans. The supporting cast includes Crispian Belfrage, Rachel Marquez, Erick Hayden and Mina Renoir, none of whom had especially prominent profiles at the time of release. For a low-budget thriller straddling two countries and two genres, action and drama, the film was, to put it gently, ambitious in scope.
Behind the camera, cinematography was shared between David Kazadi and Sam Walker, while the editing was handled by Sami Mati and Bobby Tannock, and the score composed by Giovanni Puocci. The dual-cinematographer credit, like the dual-director arrangement, hints at a production that may have been assembled across different shoots or locations, and the visual texture of the film presumably reflects that patchwork quality. Puocci's score sits beneath a film that wants to feel like a proper thriller, propulsive and tense, though how successfully that atmosphere is sustained on screen is, naturally, a matter for the review itself. Low-budget action thrillers with political backdrops can land well when the craft is focused and the material is handled with care, as I covered when I wrote about Europa (2021), another film with Iraqi roots grappling with displacement and violence. For a very different register, the Palme d'Or-adjacent Turtles Can Fly (2004) offers a point of comparison from the same part of the world, one that shows what disciplined, heartfelt filmmaking about Kurdish experience can look like. As for British low-budget features, they have their own long tradition of punching above their weight, though not every film manages it.
There are bad films, and then there are films that make you question the entire exercise of watching. This is firmly in the second camp. Written, directed by, and starring the same person in the lead role, it has that particular flavour of vanity project that gives vanity projects a bad name. From the very first minute, something is deeply, irreparably wrong. The acting is awful in a way that's hard to put into words. Not charmingly wooden. Not so-bad-it's-funny. Just... painful. The kind of stiff, unconvincing delivery that makes you acutely aware you're watching someone perform rather than inhabit anything resembling a human being.
The effects are bad. The setting doesn't convince for a single second. The writing is hammy in the extreme. And all of this announces itself in the opening scene alone, before the film has even had a chance to get going. It doesn't improve. Why would it?
You know when people talk about Tommy Wiseau's The Room as this singular disaster of ego and incompetence? 16/03 is the Iraqi answer to that. I don't mean that as a compliment in the so-bad-it's-good sense, either. The Room has a deranged energy that keeps you watching through sheer bafflement. This doesn't have that saving grace. It's not entertaining in its failure. It's just a slog.
What's frustrating is that I do genuinely believe low-budget filmmaking can be extraordinary. I've seen it done with real craft and heart. But craft and heart require self-awareness, and a willingness to acknowledge the limits of what you can pull off with the resources you have. This film shows none of that. It reaches for something it simply cannot achieve, and the gap between ambition and execution is so vast it's almost vertiginous.
I won't pretend to have suffered all the way through in the traditional sense. I endured enough. The intro alone gave me everything I needed to know, and what it told me wasn't encouraging. Half a star, and I'm being generous with that. Sometimes films earn a low score by being misguided but interesting. Sometimes they earn it by just being bad. This is the latter.
No wonder nobody else has reviewed it. Consider this review both a public service and a cautionary tale. If you find it on Plex, if the title catches your eye, if you find yourself hovering over the play button: don't. Just don't.
Half a star.
And that, I think, is really all there is to say. When ambition outruns ability this dramatically, no amount of goodwill towards the subject matter rescues what ends up on screen. I have sat through some punishing watches in the course of keeping this site going, including some spectacularly misconceived action films, but 16/03 earns its place somewhere near the bottom of that particular pile. If you want low-budget cinema that actually delivers, look almost anywhere else. The Kurdish experience deserves better storytelling than this, and so, frankly, do you.
Rating: ½ | Year: 2017 | Watched: 2025-06-30
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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