The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

(Flash Review)During WWI, a British officer requests the help of locals to show him the way through the dessert mountains to a secret water well. This is the foundation story on which the main story grows upon. And that is of a little boy who tags along with his older brother, another local and the British officer. Along the journey he grows and matures amongst several tense situations. With sparse dialog, much of the story is told visually with the help of amazing scenery and believable acting. The viewer is fully engaged as you had no idea what'll happen next as the story unfolds as the journey goes. Very nice piece of cinema especially from an unexpected country.

Theeb is the story of two brothers Theeb and Hussein who act as Pilgrim Guides to a British Officer who as part of his mission must find a Roman Well. Upon their arrival at the Well, the group are ambushed by raiders and all of the group (except Theeb) are killed by the raiders. With limited skills and knowledge, Theeb finds himself facing the perilous task of surviving in the desert against all odds.Director and writer Naji Abu Nowar is clearly in no rush to tell his story here and this 'slow-burn approach' is something that invariably can divide audiences. I personally feel that if a director/writer is opting to allow the story to unfold slowly then they need to make sure that the audience are able to become involved with the characters or care for their plight and so on and so forth. This is part of the problem with Theeb in that the characters here aren't really that interesting and no real dynamic seems to exist between them. Also the first part of the story (which sees them being guided to a Well) simply isn't that compelling. There are momentary bursts of energy (such as when Theeb tries to open the British Officer's 'secret box') but for the most part it is quite dull and uninvolving.Another problem I had with this film is the way that it was sold to me; the summary of this film on Sky Movies reads "Oscar-nominated coming-of-age tale about a young Bedouin boy fighting for survival in the desert during the First World War". OK the coming-of-age part I can sort of see, but a fight for survival? Where did this aspect of the story come into play? A fight for survival suggests that we are supposed to fear for someone's life and in all honesty I never really felt scared for Theeb which took away much of the intensity. Sky Movies are perhaps partly to blame as their summary massively over sells the film and suggests it to be something that it isn't. That's just one of the reasons that I came away from this film feeling slightly disappointed.There is one other thing here that I didn't really understand and that is why Theeb didn't just tell the raider to take him back to his tribe when he originally had the gun pointed at him? Theeb is atmospheric and beautifully shot, but the story unfolds far too slowly and even when it got going it didn't really grip me and only held my interest at sporadic intervals.

This is a good film. The story of Theeb will tug at your heartstrings for this little boy and his hardships. I think the reality of it is great and honestly much of the time I forgot this took place 100 years ago. It is a story of coming of age, revenge, life, and the harshness of that place. I am inspired by the little boy. He is able to survive and persist. He doesn't give up. The harshness of it all seems too much to us today, but it reminds me of the sheltered nature of our world in the US. I have been to the middle east. I cannot imagine the harshness of those times knowing my more modern experiences. This seems predictable but there are so many plot turns that surprise you!

Right away seeing this film I was confident that it definitely would get nominated for the Oscars. Yesterday (14-01-2016) AMPAS announced the list and I got confirmed that. Born and raised away from their motherland, after learning filmmaking in the west they returned to the root to make films about the native culture and history.One such example was the recent Ethiopian film 'Difret' that brought on screen the gruesome culture still practiced and now this. These films are the hidden gems, something we won't get regularly in Japanese, English, German, Russian, et cetera films, due to variation in culture, history and geographical diversity.This film is set in the year 1916, exactly a hundred years ago from now. But due to take place in the hot desert with gun fights, it looked a lot like a western genre. A story about a young boy named Theeb. When he went along with his elder brother to guide a British officer to a classified destination, he gets stranded and had to face some troubles to get back safely to his tribe.Right from the beginning it focused only Theeb, but that's when he caught between during the World War I tension and some domestic conflict over pilgrim related. There's no clear picture what those are all about, especially if you got no knowledge about the history of this part of the earth. But something was sure that the British officer was looking for his regiment. So they became the subplots as the boy and his struggle was told through his eyes which is the prime plot. A simple tale, but everything was described through the actions, not the with the words."The strong eat the weak."There were sufficient violence in the tale, but still not that brutal as we've seen in some of the major Hollywood flicks about the two World Wars. Considering the timeline of this narration and revolutionary movement, all makes sense, especially knowing a child involved in it. I don't know whether it was based on the real, but the depiction was natural and that's the commitment paid off very well in the end.You won't feel like you're watching some middle-eastern film, more like a Hollywood or British film that borrowed cast and story with the original language from that region. I felt that way for many reasons and one of that was the awesome background score. And the landscapes, nothing less than the recent CGI extravaganza 'The Martian'. It's not red, but actual Arabian desert that very well utilised to narrate the plot.Completely in Arabic language, but there're a very few English lines. It's not anything about related to religion and culture, but survival and revenge. Incidentally, this story and 'Lawrence of Arabia' takes place in the same year. I feel there's a connection between these two, not by mean officially, but like all the WWI and WWII films has the connections respectively. The common thing here was the Arab revolution, so I think this one is only the other side of the story of the title I mentioned in a very small scale.Initially I thought it might be overrated like the last year's Oscars nominee 'Timbuktu'. But good to know it was much better, the opening 10-15 minutes looked so different and then I came to know it was only an introduction to what comes after.Excellently written and beautiful cinematography, as well it definitely does not look like the director debuting with this. It's great effort from both the cast and the crew. I congratulate the whole team for earning the Oscars nod. And for you guys, it is a very good movie and I hope you are going to watch it after reading my review.8/10