A Pakistani girl and her boyfriend go on the run from thugs hired by her father in Catch Me Daddy. Laila (Sameena Jabeen Ahmed) is a hairstylist living with her boyfriend Aaron (Connor McCarron) in a trailer in West Yorkshire. Laila’s estranged father wants her to come back home and hires a group of Pakistani goons, including her brother Zaheer (Ali Ahmad), and a pair of caucasion drug-dealers, including Tony (Gary Lewis), to locate Laila and bring her home. When things go horribly wrong, Laila and Aaron try to run off to safety.
Catch Me Daddy is a crime thriller about the efforts of two competing groups of thugs to locate Laila and return her to her father. The film doesn’t go into exact detail why Laila is estranged from her father, other than the fact that he had threatened to kill her. The arrival of the thugs disrupts the quite happy existence of Laila and Aaron. Together they desperately go on the run in the dark of night, though the events seem destined to end very badly.
There is a stand-out moment in Catch Me Daddy, which sees Laila and Aaron dancing along to to Patti Smith’s 1975 song “Land,” which is one of the last minutes of happiness between the two, before things start to go seriously wrong. That scene is arguably the peak of the film, which an OK, but not great, crime thriller. Once Laila and Aaron go on the run, they spend much time in fields at night, which is quite darkly lit, making it difficult to see what’s happening. Also, the ending of the film is both sudden and cynical, which would leave many confused as to what it all means.
★ ★ ★ 1/2 | FAIR