In description, “Inheritance” sounds like one of those movies that’s about the gimmickry of its own making: A spy thriller shot entirely on iPhone, with many scenes staged in public without permits for added urgency and spontaneity. But this latest feature from Neil Burger (“Divergent,” “Limitless,” “The Illusionist”), who co-wrote the script with spy novelist Olen Steinhauer, ultimately transcends mere novelty by having an even smaller-scale gist than you’d expect. For all its multinational sprawl and intimations of high peril, the film is ultimately a two-person drama about a daughter (Phoebe Dynevor) finding out who her long-absent father (Rhys Ifans) really is. What she learns is bitter, but also dramatically satisfying enough to make this release, hitting theaters from IFC Films on Friday, feel like something more than just one more low-budget action movie with familiar faces.
Maya (Dynevor) is introduced as a sullen young woman in Manhattan, shoplifting a bottle of liquor from a bodega before picking up some dude at a club for joyless sex. It takes a bit before we realize the cause of her funk — she’s spent most of the last year caring for a dying mother who’s just passed away, leaving her grieving and rudderless. At the funeral, older sibling Jess (Kersti Bryan) whispers “I can’t believe he came,” meaning their divorced father Sam (Ifans). He’s been MIA from their lives for years, but now appears contrite and remorseful, seeking to make amends. To that end, he offers Maya immediate lucrative employment in helping him lure “foreign buyers” into high-end real estate purchases. She’s skeptical, but also desperate for some distraction, so she finds herself on the next plane to Cairo with dad.
A few questions he grudgingly answers en route suggest some of his “business” may involve money laundering for dubious characters. A few more (plus peeking at the false identity on his passport) have him admitting he “used to” do occasional espionage work. But things don’t really escalate until they’re having dinner at their arrival point. Dad leaves the table for a moment, doesn’t return, then calls his daughter, telling her to leave the restaurant immediately. As she does, a phalanx of law officers arrives, having been tipped that Sam is inside. It seems he is highly sought by such major-league players as Interpol (whose recurrent if fleetingly-seen face here is “24″ actor Necar Zadegan), as well as shadier types.
While briefly in the hands of his trusted confidante Khalil (Majd Eid), Maya gets another call — now dad is a captive, threatened with death by unknown abductors unless she can retrieve “something they paid for.” Something in the realm of stolen state secrets, we eventually learn. Giving Khalil the slip, she boards a plane to New Delhi, then a train to Mumbai, then another plane to Seoul, pursued by agents of all kinds. Meanwhile, the question of just what side dad is on, or whether he’s told her the truth about anything, grows more troubling.
The guerilla production, filming without permits, translates into Maya running around well-chosen foreign locales — sometimes chased on foot, in a taxi or on a motorbike — without the gunplay or physical stunts that normally highlight such action sequences. “Inheritance” is lively in its nervous, handheld-camera aesthetic, but never terribly exciting or suspenseful. That’s okay, since our protagonist isn’t Jason Bourne. She’s a youth in way over her head in a foreign land, where she has no language or other relevant skills, fumbling along in response to crises she’s mostly apprised to via cellphone.
When it becomes clear just how cynically she is being used, the real point becomes clear — and it’s not of the “vast international conspiracy” ilk. Instead, this emerges as the kind of story where stubborn hopes that a ne’er-do-well parent might do the right thing for once only end up confirming worst fears. All the preceding intrigue is really a setup for climactic dialogues between father and daughter that are quiet, unpleasant, but fully loaded with stinging emotional payoff. In a sense, that echoes the effect of Dynevor’s last feature, the toxic-office romance “Fair Play.” The narrative context may be very different, but the build towards bridge-burning interpersonal fireworks is similar.
How the film conceives of Maya is somewhat limited by her being a naive pawn in a bigger picture, but Dynevor easily demonstrates the screen presence to sustain this whole enterprise. Ifans, mostly seen just towards the beginning and end, maximizes his role by underplaying it — when Sam’s game is fully articulated, his continued insistence on bland faux-sincerity makes the pretense of parental instinct all the more grotesque.
In addition to Jackson Hunt’s cinematography and Nick Carew’s urgent editing pace, the biggest stylistic contributors here are the electronica-leaning score by Paul Leonard-Morgan and music supervisor Joe Rudge’s diverse selection of preexisting tracks.
English (US) ·