City of Tiny Lights

This film offers a depic­tion of Lon­don that looks to the past in order to teach valu­able lessons about the future, with Ugan­dan-Indi­an gumshoe Tom­my Akhtar (Riz Ahmed) as our fear­less guide. With a hand-held cam­era, direc­tor Pete Travis pounds the streets of the bustling metrop­o­lis, grav­i­tat­ing towards neon lights and drink­ing in the pour­ing rain.

These visu­al motifs match the sen­si­bil­i­ty of clas­sic noir, itself chan­nelled from a script writ­ten by author Patrick Neate. The impact­ful loca­tion shoot­ing lends the film a sense of urgency, and it nev­er opts for scene-set­ting aer­i­al shots or post­card vis­tas. Yet in des­per­ate­ly cling­ing to the con­ven­tions of the genre, it falls short of its poten­tial. Con­sid­er­ing the film stars one of the UK’s bright­est act­ing tal­ents, that is a shame.

Shift­ing between 1997 and the present day, our hero is tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing trag­ic events from a bygone age in order to shed light on a case brought to him by a pros­ti­tute. Her friend (also an escort) has gone miss­ing after a night in a hotel with a high-pow­ered busi­ness­man, but when Akhtar inves­ti­gates, he finds a bloody corpse. It’s glar­ing­ly obvi­ous from ear­ly on who the cul­prit is, so it is left to the minu­ti­ae of Akhtar’s per­son­al life and his fam­i­ly ties to bring out the true sus­pense and emo­tion­al heft of the story.

Actor Roshan Seth deliv­ers the film’s most cred­i­ble per­for­mance as Tommy’s inde­fati­ga­ble father, Farzad, He lends pro­ceed­ings a gen­uine pathos thanks to his rich­ly drawn char­ac­ter. He’s an immi­grant and ex-army man who recounts tall tales and crick­et metaphors to those who vis­it him in his cosy liv­ing room where the TV is con­stant­ly blar­ing the bat and ball sport. The sto­ry zips between the dif­fer­ent time peri­ods. The appear­ance of the room doesn’t change much but Farzad’s demeanour does.

In 1997, he chats to Akhtar’s friend and love inter­est, Shel­ley (Bil­lie Piper, who also plays the adult ver­sion of this char­ac­ter), about the ​“episod­ic alle­go­ry” of Charles Dick­ens’ ​‘A Christ­mas Car­ol’. There’s a smart­ness to his appear­ance. In the present day, now wid­owed and dying of prostate can­cer, he wan­ders around his house in a dress­ing gown, hunched over and enfee­bled. His infec­tious spir­it, how­ev­er, remains in tact.

Neate’s screen­play loops back to the rich depths of ​‘A Christ­mas Car­ol’ on numer­ous occa­sions. As a nar­ra­tive strat­e­gy, it’s not so sub­tle, but it does hint at a stronger film that is pos­si­bly lurk­ing just beneath the shiny sur­face. So too does Travis’ cheer­ful cli­mac­tic shot of a Yule­tide din­ner attend­ed by a diverse group of Lon­don­ers. If City of Tiny Lights can be read in the same way as the Dick­ens novel­la, it is most def­i­nite­ly a hope­ful film. It looks to the late ​’90s as a time when a teenage Akhtar had a glimpse of hap­pi­ness that was abrupt­ly ripped from him as the result of some regret­ful decisions.

As for the present day, his career is all he has left. By the time the cli­max comes around, he has man­aged to carve out a future ripe with oppor­tu­ni­ty, where fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty have become his cen­tral concern.