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It Was Just An Accident — 3.5/5

Feels like a one-room play, except there's a car! So they keep driving to new locations!! I liked this and let me see if I can figure out why I didn't love it: At the end, Eghbal sits tied to a tree, legitimizing himself via his belief system. If he is right, justice is served. If he is wrong, God will give them justice in the afterlife. In his mind, both paths are essentially equal. And this, after an hour and a half of questioning whether they have the right person, and whether it's worth hurting that person in vengeance, stands the ideological divide that paints one as winner and the other as destined to look over their shoulder. They are a believer. They have justified themselves through religious doctrine. And so I think this divide is the most interesting aspect of the movie, but I don't think this is the thing the movie is questioning. I think the movie just sort of upholds the liberal agenda of being morally pure in the singular, constantly questioning whether it is right to take righteous action if it hurts your soul, while leaving the collective without someone willing to sacrifice their soul for the greater good. We can't keep saying we're better than them while accepting that we'll never be better off than them. As I get older, and move ever closer to excusing violence, I no longer think it's good enough to ask these kinds of questions—we have an answer, repeated 1000x throughout history: no revolution occurs without violence.