NAZ & MAALIK: A Well-Intentioned Film Without Bite

Naz and Maalik are not your average lead characters. They are gay, Muslim teenagers living a relatively quiet life in Brooklyn. When they aren’t selling lotto tickets and other cheap items on the street for cash, they are discussing college, their religious beliefs, and their relationship, which they largely avoid defining.

Despite what many people around them think, they are in no way terrorists or troublemakers, and their lives would be very average if not for the external judgements being pushed upon them.

The stark reality is that a film about these two guys would not get financed by a major Hollywood studio. Luckily, filmmaking doesn’t have to be big, and the scrappy independent scene allows for their stories to be told. If filmmaking truly is about reflecting society and about teaching empathy for people unlike yourself, then the art form would be a much lesser place without films like Naz & Maalik.

Familiar Blueprints

The film takes place over a single but pivotal day, one where Naz and Maalik’s low-key lifestyle comes to a head on multiple fronts. Their wandering into larger issues feels reminiscent of several late ‘80s to mid ‘90s films (think Do The Right Thing, Kids, and early Linklater), and the meandering narrative works early on thanks to the chemistry of the two leads.

Stars Kerwin Johnson Jr. (Naz) and Curtiss Cook Jr. (Maalik) have to carry the film as they are the only characters onscreen for the majority of its 86 minute run time. They mostly just walk around New York and chat about whatever pops into their heads, and this dearth of real action puts the task of holding the audience’s attention squarely on their shoulders.

Both actors bring a certain charm that makes them believable as friends and as small-time hustlers, particularly Cook, who pulls off their flowing conversations a bit more smoothly. Surprisingly, it’s actually this section of the film that works the best because the two leads are charismatic enough to watch no matter what they’re doing.

I would be shocked if writer/director Jay Dockendorf didn’t study Spike Lee and Richard Linklater when establishing the look for this film, as its use of urban landscapes and teenage disorganization have been prominently used by both in the past. The film has a good sense of street-level life, rarely looking beyond the sidewalks and subway tunnels Naz and Maalik inhabit.

If you stop to track the path that the young men take throughout the day, it seems to crisscross and double back on itself, and it becomes surprising how few places they actually go. This limited scope is a nice visual representation of the small story that Dockendorf is trying to tell, one that gets inadvertently thrown off course by the larger world.

The Incoherence of Ideas

LGBT films have been around for quite some time now, and the festival-level films are starting to move on from telling strictly LGBT-centric storylines. Last year’s Barash had an entire b-plot about a family member’s disappearance that touched on Jewish-Arab relationships in Israel, and Naz and Maalik pushes this trend even further.

The young men’s faith is a driving force in the narrative not only because it conflicts with their personal feelings for each other, but because it draws unwanted and complicated attention from law enforcement and the federal government. This threat constantly lurks in the background as Naz and Maalik move about the city, and while it’s a timely observation, it isn’t weaved into the main storyline very effectively.

For most of the film, there is a white FBI agent trailing the pair thanks to a bad tipoff by a white police officer. It’s an uncomfortable situation that deals directly with the surveillance and stereotyping issues that plague modern America, but the film doesn’t trust its audience to draw their own conclusions. Instead, it force-feeds us talking points through Naz and Maalik that never really feels natural, and by the time the issue comes to a head, the whole thing feels like commentary with a capitol C instead of a natural part of the plot.

The religious aspect also feels uncomfortably forced by an on-the-nose climax and an obvious visual metaphor that betrays the more subtle things that the film had previously done. Throughout the beginning of the movie, the two young men are seen comfortably discussing their faith and debating the meaning of religious texts right alongside relationship issues and the myriad of other things that pop into a teenager’s head. This is more than enough to get across how important their faith is to them and how unsure they are of their own inclusion. It is a wonderful setup, but the ending disappointingly wastes it on a too-easy summary of something that could’ve been much richer.

Conclusion

With all of the influences and ideas floating around in Naz & Maalik, there was an opportunity to bring everything together into one big, meaningful ending, but instead Dockendorf wraps up each subplot in separate scenes. There’s an argument to be made that this fits with the film’s meandering style, but it also inhibits the film from bringing these ideas together into some sort of overarching observation.

The big attraction for this film is its unique setup, and those seeking it out will likely be looking for a story that offers up something new. Naz and Maalik themselves are unique, but the story they’re put in doesn’t delve deep enough or honest enough into the issues that it naturally brings up to be truly satisfying.

What do you think it will take for films like Naz & Maalik to get a bigger budget and a wider release? Let us know in the comments!

Naz & Maalik is getting a limited theatrical release in the U.S. on January 22nd, 2016, and gets released on DVD and VOD on January 26th. No other release dates are currently scheduled.