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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Iron Island (2006)

Rating: 3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Shipshape

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Iron Island on DVD

The Roxie opens a winner this week with Iron Island, a film from Iran that graced this spring's SF International Film Festival. Directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, it takes place on an abandoned oil tanker sitting in the Persian Gulf. A community of Sunni-Arab outcasts, led by Captain Nemat (Ali Nassirian), occupies its rusting nooks and crannies. Many small dramas unfold within the ship's bowels, from a small boy who collects trapped fish to an illicit romance between the Captain's young charge (Hossein Farzi-Zadeh) and an already-engaged young woman (Neda Pakdaman). This small community comes to an end when the shipboard teacher discovers that the craft is slowly sinking. Rasoulof guides his jumble of storylines like a master storyteller, balancing small moments of beauty, mystery, terror and humor -- as well as the larger parable. Like Claire Denis' recent The Intruder, sensation sometimes outweighs plot, so just breathe and let it take you for a ride.

Starring: Ali Nassirian, Hossein Farzi-Zadeh, Neda Pakdaman
Written by: Mohammad Rasoulof
Directed by: Mohammad Rasoulof
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Language: Persian with English subtitles
Running Time: 90 minutes
Date: June 30, 2006