‘It Was Just An Accident’ Review

With some movies, it can be difficult to separate the circumstances around its production from the quality of the film itself. Think of something like ‘Boyhood’, filmed over the course of twelve years, which ended up triggering praise for its filmmaking style as well as a corresponding backlash, with critics tearing down the film and its production timeline as an eye catching gimmick. This discourse focuses so much on the production, that the quality of the actual movie gets ignored.

In the case of ‘It Was Just An Accident’, director Jafar Panahi shot the film in Iran without permission after gaining his freedom from a 2022 imprisonment by the authoritarian regime that sought to silence artists as voices of dissent.

The courageous act of making this film aside, ‘It Was Just An Accident’ delivers a painful, masterful mystery thriller that moves like a visual poem, skewering the Iranian regime while functioning as a gripping examination on the meanings of justice, vengeance and forgiveness.

The film opens with a husband and pregnant wife, along with their young daughter, winding their way through the poorly lit Iranian countryside. Their peaceful drive is interrupted after the father runs over a dog. With the car now damaged, they pull over to a random house for help. While the father asks for help, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) keeps himself hidden upstairs, listening closely to the father’s voice. Vahid believes this man was his torturer, Eghbal, while he was imprisoned by the Iranian state. Without much hesitation, Vahid kidnaps this unnamed man with the intent to kill him. But after a moment of doubt, Vahid stops himself, unsure if this actually is the tormentor he originally thought. To confirm his suspicions, Vahid gathers a hodgepodge group of former political prisoners – an engaged couple, a wedding photographer, an unstable young man – with the hopes of positively identifying the kidnapped man as their hated torturer. Together, the group must figure out if this is the right man and, if so, what to do with him.

‘It Was Just An Accident’ functions expertly as a taut thriller, filled with twists both surprising and inevitable, as well as a morality play examining the human cost of vengeance on fundamentally decent people who find themselves unable to escape their trauma no matter how much they try. With its lofty philosophical and political ideas, this film never lags, as it moves effortlessly, bristling with a nervous energy inherent in its furtive filmmaking process that also reflects the anxieties of the characters onscreen.

As the mystery grows, the motley crew of characters grows with it in a fun, arthouse twist on a getting-the-team-back-together trope. Each character is rendered beautifully by the performer, each one desperately trying to establish a normal life, refusing to let their past traumas define them, yet unable to resist the pull of vengeance, of justice. Ultimately, these are basically good people who, despite all of their bluster, all of their inchoate rage, are unable to reconcile their own humanity with the violence that revenge demands. They don’t want to bring more violence into the world so much as they want to live in a world where violence was never done to them. A time before the pain and trauma of the Iranian regime ruined them, deprived them of a peaceful life.

Panahi is a master filmmaker, making gorgeous use of the Iranian landscape, long takes, and dramatic lighting to evoke so much tension. He tells a story with universal appeal, filled with regional specificity and beauty. By opening with the eventual kidnap victim and his family, Panahi humanizes this potential monster from the start, placing us in the same moral quandary as all of the characters to come. Is it possible this man, tenderly joking with his pregnant wife, is capable of the great evil he is accused of? Our doubts are echoed constantly throughout the film, resulting in a captivating mystery in which there are no heroes, only deeply wronged individuals looking for something to make their lives whole again.

As the end credits rolled, with no music to break the spell of the film’s drama, I sat frozen in my seat. ‘It Was Just An Accident’ is a thrilling mystery, with not a single dull frame, that will certainly entertain even as it challenges, forcing the audience to relate to these characters and question, right up until the very end, what is the right or wrong thing to do? And how these characters grapple with this question will haunt you.

It Was Just An Accident
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, violence, strong language and smoking.
Running Time: 1 hour and 44 minutes

Director Jafar Panahi
Writers Jafar Panahi
Stars Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr, Delnaz Najafi, Afssaneh Najmabadi, Georges Hashemzadeh
Rating PG-13
Running Time 104 Minutes
Genres Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller