The religion-based film business has grow to be extra subtle in recent times. Through the residence video period, it was simpler for a camel to undergo the attention of a needle than for a Christian-themed movie to function a script that wasn’t formulaic consolation meals for a hungry demographic blissful to gobble up any corny serving to of low-budget uplift. That’s beginning to change, largely as a result of efforts of Angel Studios. The Provo, Utah-based firm launched in 2021 from the ashes of the blatantly unlawful VidAngel, a service that may circumvent the encryption on studio DVDs and Blu-rays, re-cut the movies to take away no matter content material a specific buyer discovered objectionable, after which cost that buyer to view the edited model.
Since its inception, Angel Studios has positioned itself as a manufacturing firm whose movies and tv sequence “amplify gentle,” which is cautious, if obscure, wording to counsel that their product isn’t only for the religious. And usually, it’s working. When watching its current movies, like Sight, Bonhoeffer, and the blockbuster Sound of Freedom, audiences spend extra time concerned within the story and fewer time questioning in the event that they’re simply being proselytized to in a sneakier means. Nevertheless, Angel Studios’ movies, regardless of their admirable polish, nonetheless need for complexity and subtlety, which is the place we discover their newest, Rule Breakers.
Primarily based on the great true story of Afghanistan’s first all-female robotics workforce, Rule Breakers is so shiny, simplified, and hesitant to delve too deeply into third rail spiritual and political subjects that it feels prefer it was tailored from a YA novel. In spinning this distinctive yarn, Oscar-winning director Invoice Guttentag pushes all the most important and most evident buttons, which can depart younger women suitably roused whereas disappointing the remainder of us with its blatantly by-the-numbers storytelling.
No Downside Is Insurmountable in This Facile Telling
Rule Breakers
2.5
/5
‘Rule Breakers’ is predicated on the true story of Afghanistan’s first all-girls robotics workforce. In a nation the place educating women is seen as riot, a visionary girl dares to show younger minds to dream. When their innovation attracts international consideration, their success sparks hope and opposition. As threats loom, their braveness ignites a motion.
- Launch Date
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March 7, 2025
- Ranking
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PG
- Genres
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Drama, Biopic
- Runtime
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120 Minutes
- Solid
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Ali Fazal, Marie Prenant, Christian Contreras, Nasser Memarzia, Noorin Gulamgaus, Nada El Belkasmi, Waj Ali, Nikohl Boosheri
- Director
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Invoice Guttentag
- Writers
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Jason Brown, Invoice Guttentag
- Distributor(s)
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Angel Studios
- The true story of Afghanistan’s all-girls robotics workforce is actually great.
- Sure moments are rousing in an inspirational sports activities film sort of means.
- The film might positively encourage younger women.
- It not often engages absolutely with the actual points holding the women from realizing their dream.
- The characters are one-dimensional at greatest.
- The storytelling may be very by-the-numbers.
Rule Breakers was co-written by Guttentag, Jason Brown, and Elaha Mahboob, the latter two by no means having written a produced screenplay and it exhibits. The quite a few obstacles the all-girls workforce, led by an Afghan girl named Roya (Nikohl Boosheri), should overcome are not often given sufficient dramatic weight to look insurmountable inside a scene or two. Actually, the political and non secular challenges baked into any pushback in opposition to Afghan society are so soft-pedaled that the phrase “Taliban” isn’t even uttered till the movie’s second hour.
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The movie struggles to search out its footing early on as Guttentag — who shared a Finest Documentary Quick Topic Academy Award with Malcolm Clarke for 1988’s You Do not Need to Die — rushes by means of the preliminaries and jumps round in time. On the outset, we be taught that Sharia legislation prohibits women from engaged on computer systems, so Roya indulges her rising curiosity in programming by serving to an area shopkeeper grasp his PC in change for keyboard time.
Quickly she’s flaunting her in-depth information of Google founders Larry Web page and Sergey Brin, and seeing programming language, A Stunning Thoughts-style, as she walks down the road. In extraordinarily brief order, Roya is given permission to show a single laptop class, after which she opens Afghanistan’s first female-owned software program firm, launches a number of laptop courses for ladies and, lastly, after an inspirational late-night Googling session, opens a robotics college.
Woman Energy Results in Highly effective Robots
In a movie the place we’re fortunate if a personality has even one defining trait, Boosheri channels Roya’s one-dimensionally principled drive in a gradual and equanimous method. That drive shall be examined when she kinds her all-girls robotics workforce with the hope of profitable worldwide competitions that’ll encourage Afghan ladies. Naturally, candidates face spiritual roadblocks from cussed dad and mom who suppose their daughters are being stuffed with “ineffective discuss.” There’s even one woman who’s been passing as a boy as a result of her father is within the military and there are not any sons to look after the household. After rounds of testing, Roya chooses 4 moderately interchangeable younger ladies for her workforce: Taara (Nina Hosseinzadeh), Haadiya (Sara Malal Rowe), Esin (Amber Afzali), and Arezo (Mariam Saraj).
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Dubbing their squad the Afghan Dreamers and bankrolled by an Indian businessman, Samir (Ali Fazal), the group learns tips on how to construct a robotic regardless of their inexperience. Much more difficult is Guttentag throwing obstacles at them — like Afghan customs holding up essential elements, and visas being denied hours earlier than their first U.S. competitors — in such a frenetic and schematic style that Guttentag might need taken Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s traditional “however and due to this fact” screenwriting lesson an excessive amount of to coronary heart.
As with every Angel Studios movie, it is value questioning how a lot or how little its Christian worldview performs into occasions. Rule Breakers steers away from Christian advocacy, as a substitute going for some gentle America boosting, with the States given as the rationale Afghan ladies have any freedom in any respect. One workforce member even desires of getting her PhD in New York and driving a crimson Mustang convertible. As for Roya, she prefers a job at Apple or Google in California. However given actual life occasions, none of this reads as agenda-driven, and solely excessive Islamic fundamentalism takes it on the chin, which most of us can agree is hard-earned.
Certainly, because the Afghan Dreamers end higher at every successive robotics competitors, Taliban stress will increase and the movie momentarily turns into extra attention-grabbing. The group threatens the women and their households whereas locals attempt to intimidate Roya with texts calling her workforce “infidels” and proclaiming “demise to traitors.” However when Fleabag‘s Phoebe Waller-Bridge exhibits up as a decide within the closing competitors in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that is a sign that actual life difficulties have taken a everlasting again seat.
‘Rule Breakers’ Ought to Have Damaged a Few Guidelines
It is tempting to forgive Rule Breakers for its moviemaking transgressions, since its story is efficacious from each demographic and religious-political views. However in contrast to Afghan Dreamers, David Greenwald’s harder-hitting 2022 documentary on the identical topic, Guttentag’s fictionalized take delivers its requisite classes about perseverance and resilience within the broad strokes and simply digestible beats of a boilerplate inspirational sports activities film. He succeeds greatest when issues really feel a bit of looser, most notably the competitors scenes the place the ingenuity of the competing robotics groups is a pleasure to behold. In any other case, the movie’s actions are extra mechanical than these of the robots.
Rule Breakers, produced by Angel Studios, shall be launched in theaters March 7.