On The Run: A Review of The Gripping “Catch Me Daddy”

As the latest addition to the list of recent British social realism films, Daniel Wolfe’s debut feature Catch Me Daddy is a gripping account of a troubled night for two lovers on the run. Mostly set in the shadowy, mystifying moors of Yorkshire, the film effectively finds a subtle balance between quietly humanist moments and tension-filled (at times, terrorizing) ones in chronicling a young British-Pakistani woman’s struggle for freedom, set against the backdrop of a macro culture directly at odds with her immediate, conservative background. The film is a tad muddied in its first act with numerous convoluted jumps between characters – it takes a while for the plot to settle and parties involved to take shape within the story – yet rewarding with significant emotional payoffs throughout for the patient.

The subject matter of Catch Me Daddy – honor killings to preserve so-called traditions and family values – hints at an eventually fast-paced cat-and-mouse chase and immediately suggests a clear divide between good and evil. Yet Wolfe’s script, which he co-wrote with his brother Matthew, is thankfully unhurried and measured, yielding a dramatic complexity that steers clear off set-in-stone clichés. And to the brothers’ credit, this serves as an unexpected, yet welcome twist in what could have been a paint-by-numbers tragedy. Opening with a voiceover reciting lines of a fitting Ted Hughes poem on Yorkshire, the story mainly follows Laila (the impressive first-time actress Sameena Jabeen Ahmed) and her boyfriend Aaron (Conor McCarron). It is unclear how long they have been on the run for (or, at first, what exactly they are up to) but the sense that they are purposefully laying low and living in fear and uncertainty is at once evident and present. Laila works at a local hairdresser with an accommodating employer while Aaron seems to wait around to figure out how to contribute to their mutual and temporary life arrangement. But when Laila’s father sets off a group of thugs after them, a company consisting of white and Asian men (including Laila’s brother Zaheer, played by Ali Ahmad), the duo’s temporary oasis shatters and they find themselves on the run again.

As previously mentioned, the Wolfes’ script purposefully indulges the audience into both sides of the chase. The film never lets us lose sight of whom to root for – if it needs to be spelled out, we do wish Laila and Aaron to get out of the mess unscathed even with a complete awareness of all the odds stacked against them. However, the filmmakers take their time with the thugs and manage to find a touching sense of realism through thoughtful scenes involving the concerned brother Zaheer, the seemingly good-hearted Tony (Gary Lewis), the rough Barry (Barry Nunney) and Junaid (Anwar Hussain), who appears to lead the increasingly brutal operation. Driven either by financial need or tradition, they spare no cruelty against Laila and Aaron, the aftermath of which becomes even more soul-crushing as we get to peek into everyone’s lives a bit closer. In that regard, Junaid’s brief visit to a photo studio while he poses to the camera with his sweet toddler girl (as a father before he potentially commits a crime for another father) grows to be intensely revealing.

I suspect the screener copy I watched the film on doesn’t do it enough justice, but Robbie Ryan’s cinematography is remarkable and memorable. Ryan, who photographed John Maclean’s Slow West (one of this year’s visual marvels) as well as Andrea Arnold’s Fish Task (a prime example of similar late-term British social realism films), shot Catch Me Daddy on 35mm, an added visual bonus surely, that I sadly cannot report on. But even on screener, his lens reads as unwearied, resolute, and poetic, as his camera takes us through gritty corners of pubs or delis, or chases the increasingly breathless action between the thugs and lovers.

I imagine that the open-ended nature of Catch Me Daddy will leave many exasperated. Truth be told, I also struggled with not knowing Laila’s eventual fate. But in a way, the ending – featuring a gut-wrenching and frightening sequence between Laila and his father – beautifully captures the filmmakers’ insistence on handling a culture destructive towards women without the easy tropes. It magnifies primary paternal instincts blinded by malicious traditions, while radically spotlighting female strength and resilience, even when trapped in an inconceivable, evil unjust.