APNAS: British-Asian Gangster Story Does Little Beyond the Basics

By Chris Knight

Rating: B

There’s nothing too wrong with APNAS, A British gangster flick whose title translates as “our own” in Pakistan’s Urdu and Punjabi languages. But there’s nothing more than nominally right about it either.

That is to say, it checks all the boxes in telling a Shakespearean-tinged drama of two cousins, one a by-the-books accountant, the other a high-living boss in Manchester’s immigrant underworld. But it does little to think outside those boxes.

James Greaney is Awais, the dutiful son of a British-Asian taxi driver, expected to earn enough to support the whole family someday.

Awais has a secret white girlfriend (Mollie Winnard) on the side, but he’s not alone in rebelling against his parents. One of his sisters is taking dance classes while supposedly studying to be a pharmacist, while the other pens long diatribes about her life (they double as voiceover narration) while never speaking.

Asim Ashraf plays Majid, who calls himself “MK” and, if we can believe the film’s prologue, got his criminal bent after a childhood spat with Awais in which he lost a Matchbox car to his cousin.

The two have been estranged for years but cross paths when Awais loses his nth accounting gig, and MK’s dad offers him easy money in money laundering. Suddenly he’s the family breadwinner, and his dad is happy not to investigate this new career path too closely.

Co-directors Ashley Chin and Darren R.L. Gordon handle the basics of the story well enough, but occasionally drop the ball in one of the many secondary motifs. There’s the immigrant-in-Britain subplot, the how-to-be-a-good-Muslim issue, not to mention Awais’ romantic life — oh, and a young cop with an older mentor on the force, both of whom also happen to be of Pakistani origin. You can probably see where that’s headed.

APNAS. Directed by Ashley Chin, and Darren R.L. Gordon. Starring James Greaney, Asim Ashram, and Mollie Winnard. In theatres September 11.