Sri Lankan Rambo


The film started so well, highlighting the difficulties of integrating into a strange society, the pressures on family etc. But why did it have to become so over the top with Dheepan acting like a Sri Lankan Stallone in the French projects? I understand the tension, but it just bordered on comical in its hyperbole. Also did anyone else not feel that if it was a complex ball of string, it all tied a bit too neatly together at the end?

Certainly worth watching, and it made me think about the pressures on integrating for new immigrants into countries across Europe, however, I did feel the last quarter took the gloss off somewhat.

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Exactly my feeling.

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A critic wrote an amusing line saying the movie suddenly decided to turn into a scene from Death Wish 3. It did feel jarringly out of place for what preceded before it. Perhaps the filmmaker was trying to say an ex-soldier who has witnesses atrocities can snap at any moment, and will forever be wounded mentally.

There was one interesting theory out there (in another thread) where Dheepan was actually dead. If you watch the scene where he decides to save his wife and gets into the car, he seems to take a direct hit to the head, and the screen turns blurry and shakes. It could be, at that moment, Dheepan dies. Everything we see after this point is fantasy - him fantasizing about saving the wife, killing the thugs, and moving to England and enjoying the rosiest of futures with his family. I believe this theory has merit.

The closing credit end on a very curious image. It shows the wife caressing Dheepan's hair, and that's it. We get multiple images of the back of his head - that head of hair. I didn't quite understand why the director chose to end it on these images. It could be interpreted as a happy ending, and he's simply enjoying the gentle affection from his wife. Or the fragmented images could mean this is not real - they are wisps of imagery that Dheepan never got to actually experience.

If the end sequence was fantasy, then Dheepan's radical tonal shift into Rambo and Liam Neeson might actually make more sense.

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