Review of Cannabis

Cannabis (2016)
8/10
Convoluted, gripping full-blooded Med crime melodrama. I love it.
14 October 2017
Had enough of the usual formulaic schlock schlock you are fed on mainstream and, increasingly, on cable TV? Want something different from the standard story lines, plots, characters and situations you know so well you could write them yourself (well, you almost could)? Well, give Cannabis a whirl.

I have to say that I have been watching it through Anglo-Saxon eyes and experiencing it with Anglo-Saxon sensibilities, for which read US/Northern European eyes and sensibilities. So if you are French, Spanish, Italian, North African or from somewhere where the days and nights are hotter (so I might as well include you guys and gals from South America) you might well tell me Cannabis and its almost grand guignol melodrama is pretty run-of-the-mill stuff and you see it on your screen seven nights a week. Well, we rather more reserved, not to say damp-souled lot up in the North don't: so Cannabis is a very refreshing change.

I like that there are no good guys or bad guys, no good girls and bad girls. I like the oh-so utterly convoluted storyline which keeps you guessing and then some. I like the lack of grandstanding, the lack of posturing, the feeling that many of the characters seem - I have to say 'seem' because this is, after all, fiction - quite true to life. I like that, as in real life, the wrong people get killed and even the heroes aren't immune. Above all, I like the moral ambiguity.

At points your credibility might be stretched and the filming is not as polished as it might be, but the whole shooting match is carried off with such panache that you really don't care. So if you want far spicier fare than your more usual diet of plastic men and women we are served up all too often on TV, give Cannabis a go. I doubt you will be disappointed.
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