Guy Lodge Film Critic On the mean streets of Casablanca dartingly navigated in “Hounds,” all life is shown to be casually disposable; an actual human body, however, is another matter.
Taking place over one sleepless night of mounting misfortune in the Moroccan metropolis, writer-director Kamal Lazraq’s first feature is a trim, unsparing crime tale that pits social desperation against a nagging spiritual conscience.
Its gig-economy gangsters may follow almost any grisly orders for a quick buck, but are equally bound to Muslim creeds and customs, glumly shrugging off any disparity between these two authorities.
Following an impoverished father-son duo as an ostensibly rote criminal errand goes bloodily awry, the film is briskly told and humidly atmospheric, though a little tonal variation wouldn’t have gone amiss amid an overriding air of hardscrabble, stomach-knotted discomfort.
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