I’ve seen the frame work for “Rear Window” tacked on to a lot of genres, from murder mysteries, vampire movies, werewolf movies, Bigfoot movies, and so much more. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” turned in to a gangster thriller before. Director Nosipho Dumisa definitely has her eyes aimed at Alfred Hitchcock’s murder mystery masterpiece, but thankfully while the film is pretty much an homage (or remake, perhaps?), “Number 37” definitely manages to stand on its own as a stellar thriller in its own right.
Set in Cape town, Randal has decided to quit his drug dealing ways and seeks to escape the ghettos with his girlfriend Pam by pulling off one last score. Months later after it goes wrong, Randal is now a paraplegic bound to a wheelchair. While trying to adjust to his new life with his long suffering girlfriend, their lives are now at risk when a loan shark comes knocking at his door demanding the outstanding debt he owes him. Out of boredom Randal takes to watching his neighbors with binoculars and happens upon a neighborhood gangster who happens to have a stash of money. Now with Pam’s aide he plans to steal the cash before the deadline.
“Number 37” is definitely a gut wrenching and tense thriller where our characters are not really noble or honorable individuals. They’re just people at the mercy of their own selfishness and greed that just keep getting in deeper and deeper and shit the more they try to swim out of it. Director Dumisa does a great job depicting the relentlessly grim trappings of poverty Randal and Pam are in and how his need for change takes a strangle hold on him. Randal is a man who justifies a lot of his own misdeeds with noble intentions and this manages to make his situation much more violent as the film progresses. What may either alienate or turn audiences on to “Number 37” is that no matter what happens Randal is absolutely irredeemable. No matter what he does he just can’t seem to find a way out of his troubles.
What’s worse is that the more he avoids making right decisions, the more he continues putting people around him in immense jeopardy. Randal is the most frustrating protagonist I’ve ever encountered in a crime thriller, as he just never learns from his bad choices, and doesn’t seem at all anxious to start making right or sensible ones. Like “Rear Window,” much of the tension is derived from Randal looking through his binoculars and watching events unfold from his wheelchair, and no matter what he does, he just can’t pull off the feat of solving his escalating situation that is quickly spelling doom for he and his girlfriend. The performances all around are top notch, especially with Irshaad Ally, whose turn as disabled Randal commands attention from the audience. “Number 37” is a sharp and clever thriller that Hitchcock fans might very well enjoy for the way it masterfully transplants the premise of “Rear Window” for a contemporary setting.
Fantasia 2018 runs from July 12th to August 2nd, 2018.