‘Rule Breakers’ Review: Afghanistan’s First Robotics Team
What to Watch
Based on a true story, this wholesome movie centers on four girls who make it to a worldwide competition in Washington, despite the odds.
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Rule Breakers
Positive Elements | Spiritual Elements | Sexual & Romantic Content | Violent Content | Crude or Profane Language | Drug & Alcohol Content | Other Noteworthy Elements |
Conclusion
Roya Mahboob is no stranger to adversity.
Growing up in Afghanistan, the educational opportunities afforded to her were very different than those of her male peers. For example, when her school acquired two hand-me-down computers, Roya and the other girls in her class were dismissed—forced to wait outside their classroom while the teacher instructed the boys in this new technology.
Situations like that were the norm, not the exception, for Roya. Girls were barred from learning subjects such as math, science and technology. In her culture, women’s education was an afterthought, at best. Many considered it shameful and actively sought to suppress teaching girls such skills.
But that opposition did nothing to quash Roya’s desire to learn. And learn, she did.
From humble origins fumbling through Windows XP in a local café to founding the first female-owned software company in Afghanistan years later, Roya faced and overcame adversity at every turn.
Years later, the Afghan culture remains closed to the idea of women being well-educated and working outside the home. Roya is understandably frustrated. What good is it to blaze a trail that no one can follow?
So, she starts offering computer classes for girls. The classes are successful, and the girls who attend learn valuable skills. Still, Roya sees their impact as merely a drop in a bucket. She’s been trying to demonstrate to Afghanistan the value women can offer as engineers and innovators, but her country has been slow to see.
She’ll have to show the world instead. But how? Roya has a plan: Form an Afghan all-girls robotics team to compete in events around the globe. “It will show our girls in a new light,” she tells her brother, Ali.
He expresses his doubts—no one from Afghanistan has ever done something like this, after all. Roya is undeterred, reminding her brother that “nothing ever happened unless someone dreamed it first.”
And so, Roya and Ali set out to find the most mechanically gifted girls they can recruit to the robotics team. Turns out, finding the girls is the easy part. It’s everything else that’s hard.
Good thing Roya has experience overcoming adversity. She—and her team—are going to need it.
As mentioned above, Roya is extremely perseverant, even in the face of nearly impossible odds. She overcomes the obstacles in front of her and also shares the knowledge she has gained with others. We see the positive impact Roya has on those around her, especially the young girls on the robotics team or in her computer classes. It shouldn’t be lost that she does all of this under the threat of violence; she literally risks her life to help improve those of Afghan women.
Roya’s perseverance rubs off on the girls of the robotics team, who call themselves the Afghan Dreamers. They encounter a dizzying number of setbacks, including a significant personal tragedy. But they continue to push forward while bettering themselves and supporting each other. The girls form a true bond: celebrating each other, mourning with each other and, ultimately, trying to change their country’s perception of what females are capable of.
Ali is a steadfast supporter of his sister and the girls’ robotics team. He makes sacrifices for the team and serves as a listening ear for Roya. In many ways, he’s the only person with whom she can express her doubts and fears. Roya says that her father encouraged her to learn and better herself (a rare thing in their culture).
A girl’s father allows the Afghan Dreamers to use his garage (and tools) to build their robots, even after he is threatened by the Taliban. When Roya feels discouraged, a friend lifts her spirits by turning her attention to the positive changes that have occurred in Afghanistan, in which Roya has played no small part.
Roya wins a friend and mentor in Samir, an American entrepreneur. He supports her and the Afghan Dreamers, providing money for them the travel and participate in robotics competitions around the world.
There is an air of collegiality and sportsmanship in the robotics competitions in which the Afghan Dreamers participate. Teams from all over the world help and encourage one another, even during competition. Several of the robotics projects shown are made with the goal of helping people or saving lives. In a few instances, total strangers help Roya and the Afghan Dreamers when they’re in need.
The main characters in Rule Breakers are Muslim. We see one girl extend her hands in prayer. She tells Roya that she was “asking Allah’s forgiveness.” Roya replies that Allah will forgive her. A man says, “God [meaning Allah] was with us.” There are candles set by pictures of a man at his funeral; people come to pay their respects and pray. A handful of mosques are shown. Sharia Law, a system of Islamic religious regulations, is referenced.
There is one mention of Jesus, but I found it a bit odd. Roya meets a mechanic named Jesus (pronounced “hay-SOOS”). He shares his name and then, strangely, offers up the English pronunciation of it. When Roya hears this, she responds, “Like the Christian prophet?” She then likens it to her father being named Muhammad, after the founder and prophet of Islam.
Women wear hijabs, which can be tied to religious observance. Some people (sincerely) say, “Thank God.”
One girl convinces her uncle to let her be on the robotics team by telling him that she will become famous and attract a wealthy husband. Later, the uncle becomes angry after seeing images of the girl “touching boys” during a robotics competition—in reality, they were simply signing each other’s shirts as an innocent gesture of goodwill.
People are seen kissing and dancing suggestively in a club. Some clubgoers wear tight-fitting clothing. We see girls dressed in modest pajamas in a hotel room. A song has some suggestive lyrics.
Most of the violent content found in Rule Breakers is alluded to, rather than seen. The one exception is when Roya, Ali and their sister are attacked by assassins. A man shoots at their car with a rifle. Fortunately, the gun jams after only a few shots and the assassins flee. Roya and the others survive uninjured.
We see the destructive aftermath of a mosque bombing, in which one character was killed. There’s a brief glimpse of a covered body on a medical gurney shown on the news. Someone talks about a suicide bombing. A customs officer withholds a robotic kit from the Afghan Dreamers on the off chance that it might be used as a weapon.
Roya and the others are under constant threat of violence. As the Afghan Dreamers gain notoriety, Roya receives menacing texts. One girl’s father gets a threatening letter from the Taliban. We hear that approximately 10,000 people are injured or killed by landmines each year (with half of the civilians killed being children). We hear about someone’s 13-year-old cousin who died from a landmine. Someone talks about children, particularly girls, being beaten for looking at Facebook.
There are three misuses of God’s name—two of which are in a song that plays over a montage. A woman is called an “infidel.”
People party and drink in a club. A waiter carries a tray of alcoholic drinks.
In one scene, the girls on the robotics team sneak out of their hotel room to explore Berlin and end up in a club. Ali finds and scolds them. They push back, wishing for “one time in [their] lives without someone telling us what to do.”
Knowing what the girls have been through back home, it’s a sympathetic statement, but that doesn’t change the fact that they put themselves in an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous situation. Ali agrees that Roya should not be told about the girls’ misadventure.
Roya tells a group of girls that “the first time I touched a computer was like a light in the darkness.” When Roya and others ask for a computer class for women, a professor tells them that there would be “a better chance of Madonna becoming president of Afghanistan.” Parents refuse to let their daughters participate in the robotics team for various reasons.
Someone listens to Iranian rap. Global warming and environmental destruction are mentioned.
Rule Breakers is based on the inspiring true story of the Afghan Dreamers, the all-girl robotics team hailing from Herat, Afghanistan. It delivers strong messages about teamwork, sacrifice, perseverance and the value of women’s education, particularly in the fields of science and engineering. The story’s pacing hits some bumps as it establishes the narrative groundwork for the film. But the screenplay hits its stride when the girls’ robotics team forms and they compete to prove their worth to the many skeptics in their home country.
The film is largely free of objectionable content as well. There are a handful of misuses of God’s name. Another scene takes place in a club where people drink, kiss and dance suggestively. There’s some violence and the threat of violence from the Taliban and others, but by and large those instances are alluded to, not shown. Finally, there’s a fair bit of sexism within the Afghan culture that creates many of the obstacles the Afghan Dreamers must face.
Though produced by Angel Studios, which has come to be known for faith-themed stories such as Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin, Sound of Freedom and Cabrini, among others, this one isn’t a Christian film. Set predominantly in Afghanistan, the main characters are Muslim. While their personal believes aren’t an integral part of the movie, we do see and hear references to the Islamic faith—especially in the harsh ways that some fundamentalist Muslims treat women. The only mention of Jesus, as noted above, is a reference to Him as “the Christian prophet.”
Apart from those caveats, Rule Breakers is a competently made, feel-good film that recounts an inspiring true tale without sullying the story with questionable content.
Bret loves a good story—be it a movie, show, or video game—and enjoys geeking out about things like plot and story structure. He has a blast reading and writing fiction and has penned several short stories and screenplays. He and his wife love to kayak the many beautiful Colorado lakes with their dog.
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‘Rule Breakers’ Review: True-Life Drama About All-Girls Afghan Robotics Team Hits Its Inspirational Marks
Directed by Bill Guttentag and distributed by Angel Studios, the film tells the story of the Afghan Dreamers.
BY FRANK SCHECK
This latest movie from Angel Studios demonstrates that the distributor’s interest in releasing films that veer away from proselytizing is paying off artistically. Relating the true-life story of the Afghan Dreamers, a group of young women who groundbreakingly participated in international robotics competitions, Bill Guttentag’s Rule Breakers proves inspirational in the best sense of the word. The film’s release is perfectly timed for Women’s History Month.
Scripted by the two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker (for the documentary shorts Twin Towers and You Don’t Have to Die), along with Jason Brown and Elaha Mahboob, the film centers on Roya Mahboob (Nikohl Boosheri), whose interest in computers wasn’t exactly encouraged in her native Afghanistan, as demonstrated by an early scene in which she’s nearly assassinated.
When she was a young student, she was ordered to leave the classroom along with the other girls when the teacher began instructing the boys as to how to use some newly arrived computers. She’s shown forlornly peeking in through the window, desperate to learn a subject that fascinates her but is denied to her gender.
Several years later (the film suffers at times from its confusing timeline), she’s a star university student who strikes a deal with a friendly café owner (Nassar Memarzia) to teach him how to use the computer he keeps for his male customers if he’ll let her practice on it every morning before he opens up.
Not much later she’s not only become an expert with the technology, but has also started her own successful software company and opened a computer school for girls. Their interest is deeper than she expected; when she decides to create an all-girls robotics team and seeks four members, dozens of girls show up to audition.
Needless to say, the team faces numerous hurdles, including the resistance of the girls’ families to let them participate. But Roya proves as persuasive as she is determined, as illustrated in one of the film’s best scenes, which finds her convincing one skeptical father to let his daughter pursue her dream.
The obstacles continue even after the team proves their mettle. Preparing to travel to America to participate in a competition, the girls are denied visas for such reasons as having recently traveled to Iran to visit a relative. After Roya appeals to a sympathetic American journalist to write about their plight, the story becomes an international media sensation. And even then, traveling at the last minute, they’re nearly unable to get on a sold-out flight until several people volunteer to give up their seats.
The ensuing plot developments as the team travels around the world participating in robotics competitions strike both familiar and fresh beats, the former stemming from the standard tropes endemic to the genre and the latter from the unique circumstances involved. For instance, after one competition, the girls excitedly sign the shirts of competing male players and get theirs signed in return, leading to shaming by their relatives and violent threats from the Taliban.
There’s even the obligatory competition montage scored to upbeat music, in this case the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.”
But despite its occasionally stale elements, the film succeeds movingly thanks to the inherent power of its narrative and the terrific performances by Boosher and the four young actresses (Amber Afzali, Nina Hosseinzadeh, Sara Malal Rowe, and Mariam Saraj) as the team members. Ali Fazal (Death on the Nile, Victoria & Abdul) shows up briefly but appealingly as an Indian-American businessman who provides moral and financial support, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge displays a warm, winning presence as a competition judge.
Rule Breakers proves scattershot in its storytelling and features one or two too many last-minute crises for its plucky heroines to overcome. But by the time the titular characters enter the climactic competition with their ingenious invention of a landmine-detecting robot that has the potential to save thousands of lives around the world, you’ll be thoroughly rooting for them. The end credits provide a satisfying coda informing us about the real-life figures involved, including Roya Mahboob being named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.
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