‘Fire’ Review: A Low-Key Kazakh Comedy as Likeable as Its Hangdog Hero

variety.com:

Jessica Kiang Strange how it can feel like not a lot happens in a film that features unwanted teen pregnancy, spousal abandonment, mounting debt, a heart attack, a fistfight and a police chase that ends in a car crash.

Even stranger that in the case of ​​Aizhana Kassymbek’s “Fire,” the impression of uneventfulness in a story packed with incident is almost entirely a positive thing: Kassymbek’s light, wry touch and her profound affection for the flawed decency of her characters siphon the gloom from what easily could have been a grim, gray social realist Book of Job, leaving behind instead a droll dramedy with a surprisingly tender and even emotional keel.Bad things have a nasty habit of happening to good people, but cheerfully long-faced.