Inheritance

Movie Review

Nine months.

For nine months, Maya had cared for her dying mother. For nine months, she’d been trapped in her mom’s small apartment—feeding her, administering her medications, trying to make her as comfortable as possible.

Maya was happy enough to do it. Her mother was a saint; everyone said so. To help her mom who had helped so many? It was the least Maya could do.

But her mother’s gone now. And after nine months of Maya’s life revolving around one very wonderful, very sick woman, Maya must ask herself a difficult question: Now what?

Then, during her mother’s funeral, someone who’s almost a stranger walks in to pay his respects, to say goodbye.

Maya’s father.

She hasn’t seen her dad, Samuel, for years—not since she was still in school. Maya’s sister is appalled that he’d show his face at all. But Maya always felt a certain kinship with her father. He’s no saint, and neither is she. While Mom took care of everyone, Samuel and Maya were the family’s mischief makers. The rule breakers.

And let’s be honest; almost against her will, she missed the guy.

So when Samuel—full of apologies and regret—offers Maya a job, Maya’s interested. And the gig seems simple enough.

In the years since Samuel left his family, he’d become a dynamite—and apparently rich—international real estate mogul, selling property to Middle Eastern sultans and Asian oligarchs. He’s in the middle of a sale right now involving some wealthy businessmen from Cairo. And he’d like Maya to help close the deal. All she needs to do is come to Cairo for a few days and be her charming self. Easy money, Sam promises.

But after he and Maya board a plane for Egypt, Maya discovers that her father has, once again, been keeping secrets.

For starters, his passport is under a different name. When she asks him about it, he slowly confesses that he’s made some enemies, laundered some money—even served as a spy for a bit. Nothing bad, Sam assures her over a posh Cairo dinner: He always was on the right side of every deal and every conflict. But still, one can’t be too careful.

Just as he’s spilling these secrets, he gets a call that he walks away from the table to take.

He doesn’t come back.

A few minutes later, Sam calls her in a panic. She must leave the restaurant. Now.

She does. But it’s not the last job Sam has for her. He tells her he’s been kidnapped, and Maya needs to do exactly what his captors tell her to do. If not? Sam—who came back into her life so soon and so unexpectedly—will just as abruptly leave it.

Positive Elements

Sam has been a terrible father. He’d be the first to admit it. But he tells Maya he wants to patch things up between them, and let’s credit Maya for keeping that door of reconciliation open. She wants to rekindle her relationship with her pops. And when Sam disappears, Maya travels halfway around the globe to save him.

She needs to ultimately retrieve something from a safe deposit box and deliver it to Sam’s captors, and that requires her to travel from Cairo to Delhi (India) to Seoul (South Korea) to make that happen. That’s all while being chased. And while Maya’s sister encourages her to just go home already (What has Dad ever
done for us?), Maya does what she can to help him. We’re reminded several times about how kind and generous Maya’s mother was.

We run across a nonprofit worker who tells Maya that when “you save someone else, you save yourself, too”—and Maya tells the worker that that’s almost exactly what her mom used to say.

Spiritual Elements

Maya’s mother (we never learn her name) was apparently a Buddhist. We see a picture of the Buddha in her apartment, and someone makes reference to the “useless prayers” she used to utter.

The nonprofit worker mentioned above works for a Christian organization. Maya makes a disparaging remark about such groups and asks the worker, Emily, if she ever worries that she’s just making things worse. The worker admits she might not believe in everything the group preaches, but she totally believes that it’s helping people in need. And when Maya tries to clarify Emily’s faith—that deep down, she must really believe—Emily says, “In making a difference in people’s lives? Yeah.”

Inheritance takes us through several countries, and we see some evidence of what sorts of religions are found in each. In Cairo, we see minarets and women wearing hijabs. In South Korea, Maya walks through what appears to be an open religious shrine, facing a statue that seems to represent Buddha.

Sexual & Romantic Content

Maya goes to a club and takes a guy back to the apartment, where she has sex with him. We see Maya, apparently unclothed, from the back, engaged in sexual activity (complete with movements and noise), but she slaps the man’s hand away from her when he tries to touch her.

Someone tries to apparently pick up Maya at a restaurant: The two engage in playful, increasingly awkward banter before Maya makes a quick getaway.

When Sam talks about the “good” causes he backed in his shadowy career as a real estate agent/money launderer/spy, he mentions that he supported LGBT activists in Russia.

Violent Content

After the death of her mother, Maya spends part of the evening sitting outside her apartment window—several stories up. It seems that she considers jumping.

We hear about how more than a thousand people were killed when a bridge was blown up during the Korean War. A man slaps a woman, sending her to the ground. (The woman bears a red mark on her cheek for several scenes thereafter.)

Men threaten both Maya and her father, and Maya receives a photo of Sam—hands bound and shirt bloodied. Maya reads a news report about how a spy was gunned down by police, and we see a newspaper image of the body.

Crude or Profane Language

Nine f-words and four s-words, along with one explosive use of the c-word. We also hear milder profanities, including “d–n,” “h—” and “p-ssed.” God’s name is misused twice, while Jesus’ name is abused once.

Drug & Alcohol Content

Maya smokes cigarettes, and her father is given a cigar as a gift.

Maya swipes some liquor (likely vodka) and swigs right from the bottle. She and Sam seem to have glasses of wine at a Cairo restaurant.

Other Noteworthy Elements

Maya’s right: She is no saint. Throughout the film, we see her steal stuff—be it a bottle of booze, a pair of sunglasses or someone else’s passport. She lies, as well—as do several people she runs into—and runs from the police several times.

But if she plays fast and loose with the law, her father has taken it several steps farther. The intricate webs of his lies, betrayals and wrongdoing are unpacked as the movie weaves toward its conclusion.

Conclusion

Some big-scren father/daughter stories are tender, touching affairs: a close bond strengthened. An estrangement healed.

Inheritance is not one of those stories.

Sure, family ties come into play here. But those ties are just as likely to bind people to chairs as they are to pull them together. Father knows best? Hardly. Inheritance gives us a rooting interest, but even the movie’s protagonist dances in the moral shadows. And that makes Inheritance a tough sell.

Admittedly, the film could’ve been much, much worse. It’s built on lies and deception, not blood and guts. This thriller is surprisingly bloodless, and—except for a few sensual scenes and a few words, Inheritance minds its content manners.

But those few scenes and few words are more than enough to push it to an R rating. And given that the movie will likely be forgotten a few weeks after release, this Inheritance might be best rejected.