Narrative
The opening sequence starts off with a slave who is unnamed at this moment in time to keep this sense of his unimportance in comparison to the grander scheme of events that is going on around him but we later find out he is called Jumaani, and the slave master. The slave is running after just escaping from his captors around his leg is a beeping device which we find out is a police house arrest device. The actual scene starts off on a black screen with some casting and the background noise of this beeping noise soon after this heavy breathing is added to the scene and then footsteps when the on screen film starts to play we see here the unnamed slave running away from his captors. The protagonist gets into a close encounter with one of his captors whilst escaping as an irrelevant minor antagonist walks through the tunnel the protagonist hides on the side of the wall covering his mouth with his hand to mask his heavy breathing. He also tries to muffle out the sound of the house arrest tag with his clothing. The captor continues past the tunnel not spotting the protagonist, until the protagonist accidentally slips revealing the beeping much more clearly.
At this point the opening sequence becomes clearly omniscient (where the viewer has more knowledge about what's going on as they've seen more than certain characters) we see our first shot of the menacing antagonist here we can see him playing with some sort of weapon, the shots are exchanged back and forth between the captor chasing the protagonist and the protagonist alone running and also the antagonist testing his weapon, the time between each exchange of shots gets smaller and smaller until the antagonist and protagonist meet.
The antagonist swings his weapon at the protagonists’ leg breaking this beeping of the house arrest alarm and forces the protagonist to be planted onto his back.
After some exchange of dialogue between the antagonist and protagonist we find out that he was not the only one to have escaped, someone close to the protagonist has been caught, this person is brought out and revealed to the viewer, we also find out the nickname of the slave master, being shortened to, 'The Master' for both the purposes of his roles and to intimidate all others around him.
The antagonist asks three of his thugs to hold down the protagonist and they beat him to the floor, the shot is cut to a shot of the antagonist aiming for the face to Jumaani’s sibling and the shot is cut to the antagonist asking someone to record this whole ordeal.
Both the audiences camera and the camera within the diegesis is now locked onto the protagonist's face, the antagonist asks his thugs to force his eyes open so he can see what is happening to this person of importance of the protagonist. The camera still locked onto the protagonists face shoes his face in despair. The master jokes and says 'Why stop there?' off camera as the camera is still locked onto the protagonist who forces himself out of the hold of the Masters thugs and then the Master continues to destroy the jaw of the protagonists’ sibling off camera off camera we can hear the antagonist sadistically joking about Jumaani’s sibling’s jaw falling off.
At this point the opening sequence becomes clearly omniscient (where the viewer has more knowledge about what's going on as they've seen more than certain characters) we see our first shot of the menacing antagonist here we can see him playing with some sort of weapon, the shots are exchanged back and forth between the captor chasing the protagonist and the protagonist alone running and also the antagonist testing his weapon, the time between each exchange of shots gets smaller and smaller until the antagonist and protagonist meet.
The antagonist swings his weapon at the protagonists’ leg breaking this beeping of the house arrest alarm and forces the protagonist to be planted onto his back.
After some exchange of dialogue between the antagonist and protagonist we find out that he was not the only one to have escaped, someone close to the protagonist has been caught, this person is brought out and revealed to the viewer, we also find out the nickname of the slave master, being shortened to, 'The Master' for both the purposes of his roles and to intimidate all others around him.
The antagonist asks three of his thugs to hold down the protagonist and they beat him to the floor, the shot is cut to a shot of the antagonist aiming for the face to Jumaani’s sibling and the shot is cut to the antagonist asking someone to record this whole ordeal.
Both the audiences camera and the camera within the diegesis is now locked onto the protagonist's face, the antagonist asks his thugs to force his eyes open so he can see what is happening to this person of importance of the protagonist. The camera still locked onto the protagonists face shoes his face in despair. The master jokes and says 'Why stop there?' off camera as the camera is still locked onto the protagonist who forces himself out of the hold of the Masters thugs and then the Master continues to destroy the jaw of the protagonists’ sibling off camera off camera we can hear the antagonist sadistically joking about Jumaani’s sibling’s jaw falling off.
Conflict and Complication
The conflict and complication of this film comes before the movie starts so that we are thrown straight into the action of the movie being a smash mouth opening, it is however the Masters slavery regime and how it is run, obviously with slavery there is obviously a complication of the slaves wanting to be freed but there is further conflict with the brutality of the Master against anyone who objects him.
ElaborationThrough the film we see the many ways the Master has this ‘hold’ over his slaves and how he has this much bigger world under his hand that the Protagonist could see before the beginning of the film after trying to escape, this escape led the Antagonist to see that Jumaani is indeed talented and should not really be wasted away on one of the masters factory floors and warehouses. Jumaani reluctantly after agreeing to join the Master as one of his hit-men, though more restricted, sees this bigger world of the master and sees this world that the average person cannot see of abuse and slavery under working with the master his moral compass after meeting one of his targets is realigned and helps this fight against the Master.
An important note is that the same moral compass is shifted again by climax of the film where he shows no mercy to the family of the Master.
The narrative after the opening sequence.
After the opening sequence we see the Protagonists eyes linger onto the pool of blood on the floor and he has a bag put on his head, the Master asks how this happened and is explained to by the thugs, the Master is very surprised by the ways he escaped and got into a van and continued to have him being escorted back to this mysterious supposedly abandoned storage facility. The Master takes off the sack from the protagonists head and explains through dialogue that he's been taken to the Masters most brutal facility but he will not be working as a slave for a very long time it's at this point we understand that things for him are not going back to normal. We see the backlash of the protagonist's actions and he is tortured through a montage (the month over a period of months, each time a month to a week passes we see his hopes and aspirations of anything slowly die overtime as he is being tortured around this one room, we see scenes where he is dying of thirst and scenes where he is almost being frozen to death being constantly watered down.
The montage almost starts to slow down when 'the Master' comes in from another room before checking a notification on his phone to check on 'Jumaani' and jokes around with the weekend slave, the Master says he forgot all about him, but the audience through the omniscient view knows it is all planned. The Master now properly understanding these new capabilities of Jumaani, the Master now has a higher purpose for him than being one of his average slaves.
We are taken on a tour of The Masters storage facility, which looks much more like a production line in a factory than anything more commonly associated with slavery. The Master goes around the factory almost maliciously pushing Jumaani around with him collecting a few pieces from each of the sections of the factory very slowly and dramatically as we see the larger, 'empire' that the Master has and all the people that he has forced under his thumb with all of the house arrest tags on their legs.
He pushes him onto the table and tapes him down, he starts to put together a device using all of the parts that he has together he starts to form a gun and completes it with parts from the other factories he has, he gets a bullet out of his pocket slowly and loads one in the chamber, Jumaani barely even flinches as the Master cocks the gun, a cut happens and in this omniscient style we see some thugs bringing in a person unknown at this moment of time to the viewer, the Master moves to point the gun at him. He quickly moves the gun to the left and pulls the trigger a body falls onto him, so weakened he cannot move the body off of him. We see the Master talking but music outside of the diegesis drowns him out.
He is put back into the cell he is contained in and is left to think, the viewer follows his thoughts into a dream sequence. We see an empty room which seems to be carved out of dirt slowly fill up with supplies, we also see a group of people trying to escape but guards of this place shoot at their legs slowly taking them down and we see two people working with each other and a guard we find that this person from the beginning is his step-brother and that they share a deep connection, the guard being a rival gang informant and the other being related to Jumaani. However, this dream sequence is cut short when we see both of them being killed together the same way they were killed by the Master.
We are bought to a room with a two-shot of the main characters Jumaani and the Master here coming to an agreement to work together, Jumaani reluctantly agrees to go with the masters plan of being one of his hit-men with nobody left in Jumaani’s life to help his conscience he feels there's no way out of the masters trap than working his way out like everyone else.
The master reveals his master plan to be the only source of high military grade weaponry and to storm London with gangs under his thumb, he admits that inevitably this will end in the death of thousands on both hands from his own gangs, the police and civilians but he explains by the time this has all been resolved he would be far away from all of the trouble and would have pinned it all on one of his slaves.
Agents of change
The montage almost starts to slow down when 'the Master' comes in from another room before checking a notification on his phone to check on 'Jumaani' and jokes around with the weekend slave, the Master says he forgot all about him, but the audience through the omniscient view knows it is all planned. The Master now properly understanding these new capabilities of Jumaani, the Master now has a higher purpose for him than being one of his average slaves.
We are taken on a tour of The Masters storage facility, which looks much more like a production line in a factory than anything more commonly associated with slavery. The Master goes around the factory almost maliciously pushing Jumaani around with him collecting a few pieces from each of the sections of the factory very slowly and dramatically as we see the larger, 'empire' that the Master has and all the people that he has forced under his thumb with all of the house arrest tags on their legs.
He pushes him onto the table and tapes him down, he starts to put together a device using all of the parts that he has together he starts to form a gun and completes it with parts from the other factories he has, he gets a bullet out of his pocket slowly and loads one in the chamber, Jumaani barely even flinches as the Master cocks the gun, a cut happens and in this omniscient style we see some thugs bringing in a person unknown at this moment of time to the viewer, the Master moves to point the gun at him. He quickly moves the gun to the left and pulls the trigger a body falls onto him, so weakened he cannot move the body off of him. We see the Master talking but music outside of the diegesis drowns him out.
He is put back into the cell he is contained in and is left to think, the viewer follows his thoughts into a dream sequence. We see an empty room which seems to be carved out of dirt slowly fill up with supplies, we also see a group of people trying to escape but guards of this place shoot at their legs slowly taking them down and we see two people working with each other and a guard we find that this person from the beginning is his step-brother and that they share a deep connection, the guard being a rival gang informant and the other being related to Jumaani. However, this dream sequence is cut short when we see both of them being killed together the same way they were killed by the Master.
We are bought to a room with a two-shot of the main characters Jumaani and the Master here coming to an agreement to work together, Jumaani reluctantly agrees to go with the masters plan of being one of his hit-men with nobody left in Jumaani’s life to help his conscience he feels there's no way out of the masters trap than working his way out like everyone else.
The master reveals his master plan to be the only source of high military grade weaponry and to storm London with gangs under his thumb, he admits that inevitably this will end in the death of thousands on both hands from his own gangs, the police and civilians but he explains by the time this has all been resolved he would be far away from all of the trouble and would have pinned it all on one of his slaves.
Agents of change
Here the weak and personality of Klaus throughout the movie helps the protagonist see himself in a much better light, although Klaus is overall a weaker person than Jumaani he is very smart, however, this smartness is also Klaus’ downfall seeing as when Jumaani and Klaus first meet, Klaus feels that the only way that he would even be able to survive against the like of the slave master is to keep hidden for as long as he could being an immigrant with no documentation had left him helpless, now Klaus is trying to just survive against our protagonist. Jumaani is this beacon of hope that Klaus follows and that Jumaani accepts furthering this hope that they can escape the grasp of their slave master.
Over some time we see Jumaani start to fit in to his new situation working under the person who killed two of the most important people in his life, this continues over a portion of the film where we see him take down two people, we understand that people who even begin to escape the masters grasp are very talented and skilful. On one of hit-man objectives he meets a peculiar person who says he can help Jumaani not just escape the Master but take him down as well.
We explore Klaus' base where he built the supplies to hide away from both the Master and his many mercenaries, we find out that Jumaani is one of the first people to ever find him since he escaped, although he has had many close calls in the past we meet another person who shares the name Klaus but goes under the name Kay he seems to be disabled but is very talented when it comes to computing; people like Kay are optimal to become slaves under the Master's command.
As the movie progresses we see Jumaani and Klaus working together to best the Master. The Master as always in this movie was one step ahead, the Master explains he found someone when he followed Jumaani out one day, he brings out Kay, with the same weapon he uses to kill his step-brother he in one hit damages Kay, Kay is hurt and confused due to his disability, the Master continues to beat him until he becomes fatally injured. The Master laughs and mocks Jumaani.
The Master leaves the room he leaves his weapon behind perhaps as a sadistic reminder, however, there is a beeping on Kay's dead corpse, he checks the pockets of Kay we see a note that reads, 'I'm sorry' from Klaus, he had found a way to escape and found it too risky to bring Jumaani along, however, a room number is on the card, Jumaani knowing full well that things cannot get worse makes a dash for the room in anger and for motivation he picks up the Master's weapon.
We explore Klaus' base where he built the supplies to hide away from both the Master and his many mercenaries, we find out that Jumaani is one of the first people to ever find him since he escaped, although he has had many close calls in the past we meet another person who shares the name Klaus but goes under the name Kay he seems to be disabled but is very talented when it comes to computing; people like Kay are optimal to become slaves under the Master's command.
As the movie progresses we see Jumaani and Klaus working together to best the Master. The Master as always in this movie was one step ahead, the Master explains he found someone when he followed Jumaani out one day, he brings out Kay, with the same weapon he uses to kill his step-brother he in one hit damages Kay, Kay is hurt and confused due to his disability, the Master continues to beat him until he becomes fatally injured. The Master laughs and mocks Jumaani.
The Master leaves the room he leaves his weapon behind perhaps as a sadistic reminder, however, there is a beeping on Kay's dead corpse, he checks the pockets of Kay we see a note that reads, 'I'm sorry' from Klaus, he had found a way to escape and found it too risky to bring Jumaani along, however, a room number is on the card, Jumaani knowing full well that things cannot get worse makes a dash for the room in anger and for motivation he picks up the Master's weapon.
Climax
The climax is typical of most other BSR films, with little resolution and almost no justice for any of the characters that is shown on screen, in fact in my own BSR film, the main character Jumaani, also loses some of his humanity having the same amount of care as the Master at the beginning of the film when he hurts the Masters son. The protagonist comes out of this the worst out of all the main characters, the Antagonist from the ending had presumably won and Klaus after one slightly heroic gesture goes back to his cowardly ways.
The room is packed out with everything Jumaani could need for escape, however, Jumaani needs more after all he endured, a file with information about the Master is also in this room, it defiantly has been tampered by Klaus so he could make sure that he escaped but Jumaani has seen enough to know where the Master lives.
We see a younger Jumaani from the opening escape from armed guards in fear, through many cuts back and forth from before the beginning of the film he escapes in a more forced and stronger way gunning his way through thugs form the skills he's gained as a hit-man through the film.
He eventually makes his way to the Masters house and meets one of his children who seems to be in their late teens, Jumaani questions his son asking he knows what his father does, Klaus stumbles in from another room presumably stealing schematics from the Master, Klaus runs and says sorry, Jumaani aims and misses Klaus with his gun.
Here is where all characters meet in a final standoff, Jumaani has the Masters son in a similar position to his own step-brother as the Master steps into his house in a rush after seeing Klaus leave he sees Jumaani destroy his sons jaw we see both scenes cutting back and forth from the beginning of the film and in the present and Jumaani proceeds to hurt him much more as the Master could only watch on the Master shoots and aims for Jumaani's head, Klaus in one heroic act saves Jumaani but he is still wounded in the stomach, on the news we see that the rest of the inner city is in panic with gunfire from all areas and we see that Jumaani is the one that is pinned for the blame. Klaus and the Master make their escape more concerned about authorities than each other and the movie ends.
We see a younger Jumaani from the opening escape from armed guards in fear, through many cuts back and forth from before the beginning of the film he escapes in a more forced and stronger way gunning his way through thugs form the skills he's gained as a hit-man through the film.
He eventually makes his way to the Masters house and meets one of his children who seems to be in their late teens, Jumaani questions his son asking he knows what his father does, Klaus stumbles in from another room presumably stealing schematics from the Master, Klaus runs and says sorry, Jumaani aims and misses Klaus with his gun.
Here is where all characters meet in a final standoff, Jumaani has the Masters son in a similar position to his own step-brother as the Master steps into his house in a rush after seeing Klaus leave he sees Jumaani destroy his sons jaw we see both scenes cutting back and forth from the beginning of the film and in the present and Jumaani proceeds to hurt him much more as the Master could only watch on the Master shoots and aims for Jumaani's head, Klaus in one heroic act saves Jumaani but he is still wounded in the stomach, on the news we see that the rest of the inner city is in panic with gunfire from all areas and we see that Jumaani is the one that is pinned for the blame. Klaus and the Master make their escape more concerned about authorities than each other and the movie ends.
CODA
In this movie there is no clear CODA, although the movie could continue past the events shown in film, the main points that the movie had tried to make have been made and there is no clear path for the movie to take beyond this point, also being a BSR it is very rare that these sorts of films actually see sequels, similarly to movies such as, ‘The Selfish Giant’ I wanted to keep the ending of the film open for the viewer to interpret it however they please a sequel or even a clear CODA could ruin the films darker tone which has been built throughout the whole film and give viewers a false silver lining which goes against this theme of helplessness throughout the film.
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