Ghost Trail review – subtle to a fault

Jonathan Millet’s Ghost Trail played at the Cannes Film Festival a full year before Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or-winning It Was Just an Accident, which is worth noting in that both films have strikingly similar set-ups regarding the moral and ethical pretexts of bringing war criminals to justice. Hamid (Adam Bessa) shiftily walks up to a park bench in a playground and sits down next to Nina (Julia Franz Richter). They look like they’re from different worlds, but as she wanders off, he grabs an attaché case she leaves on the floor and scarpers. He is a Syrian refugee, inducted into a covert crew looking to track down and expose similarly displaced countrypersons who may now be trying to distance themselves from the Assad régime.

Unlike those perpetrators of torture and violence, Hamid takes great pains (and risks) to make sure he has the right man, gradually building up a dossier but constantly being forced to second guess his intel. Ghost Trail is best when it’s playing like a pulpy spy movie, drawing on the encounters where the audience is party to information that the characters aren’t. Indeed, the strongest scene comes when our man finally meets his charismatic mark over lunch (Tawfeek Barhom). It studiously documents the various ways that Hamid makes his case, even though there’s never that much depth to the character beyond his cloak-and-dagger maschinations and a pressing desire for justice.