MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Threat’ Fails as Iranian Potboiler

The Iran-themed “Veiled Threat” received a much-trumpeted “freedom of expression” award earlier this year, based solely on the fact that it had inspired an anonymous bomb threat. Now that it’s finally being seen, chances are this low-budget, low-velocity, lowbrow action thriller won’t be posing much of a threat at any other awards ceremony, or at the box office.

On its opening day this past weekend, however, it sold out several of its screenings, thanks to marketing geared almost entirely toward the local contingent of expatriate Iranians, many of whom may share the film’s villainous view of their country’s current regime. Despite a topical, exploitative plot, “Veiled Threat” manages to disappoint even this ready audience, failing both as bloody revenge saga and international political potboiler.

Cast against type, Paul Le Mat plays a former Tehran CIA operative who has been (surprise) bounced from the agency, taken up drinking (double-surprise) and (triple-surprise) entered the private-detective biz back home in Los Angeles. Le Mat can play baffled to perfection (“Melvin and Howard”), but he is well out of his element here as a quick-witted, ex-spook sleuth. It doesn’t help that writer-director Cyrus Nowrasteh has him doing such dazzling surreptitious deeds as directing a large piece of audio surveillance equipment out his car window, aimed at the limousine parked right across the street. Some undercover man.

Doing a favor for an old friend from the Shah’s forces (Behrouz Vossoughi), Le Mat manages to get an entire family smuggled out of Iran by blackmailing a nasty Islamic mullah (Alexander Pourtash) with a conveniently secretive taste for homosexual trysts. Soon after arriving in the United States, though, the happy clan meet an explosive end and Le Mat sets out to snare both the wily clergyman and his trigger-happy Anglo henchman (Scott Alan Campbell), which leads to a dull, haplessly contrived shoot-out in a Hollywood mosque.