‘Furies’ Review: George Clooney-Backed Lebanese Heist Drama Is Furious, Kinetic Filmmaking

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By TRH Entertainment Desk

Rami Kodeih’s feature debut turns Lebanon’s real-life banking crisis into an “anti-Ocean’s” heist thriller — messy in its plotting, but propelled by raw performances and a political rage that critics say never lets the genre thrills come cheap.

Mumbai, September 6, 2026 — “Furies,” Lebanese-Brazilian director Rami Kodeih’s feature debut, premiered in the Venice Spotlight section of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on September 4, and early reviews suggest it’s one of the more electrifying discoveries of this year’s lineup — a heist thriller grounded in genuine desperation rather than genre convenience.

Set during Lebanon’s real liquidity crisis, in which banks froze millions of depositors out of their own life savings, “Furies” follows Maro, a determined single mother, and her sister Dalia as they scheme an all-night heist to steal back their own money — funds Maro desperately needs to pay for a life-saving surgery. The film stars Maria Nakouzi and Rym Mroue as the two sisters, alongside Hasan Akil and Issam Bou Khaled, and runs 2 hours and 14 minutes.

The Hollywood Reporter’s review was unambiguous about the scale of what Kodeih has pulled off with his debut: “Furies, whose producers’ roster includes not just (George) Clooney and Grant Heslov but Rodrigo Teixeira (Call Me by Your Name, I’m Still Here), announces the arrival of a masterful storyteller.” The review noted Kodeih “has been making shorts for 20 years, and he has an assured way with high-energy action and a clear knack for working with actors,” praising the screenplay he co-wrote with Nora Mariana for taking its characters “to various forms of redemption but no easy answers.”

THR’s review singled out the writing’s ability to stay “attuned to the wider picture no less than the interpersonal,” rooting its broader political observations — about lingering civil war animosities, migrant desperation, and one country’s economic strife rippling into daily life — in specific, grounded character detail rather than abstraction.

THR also offered a useful framing device for understanding the film’s tone relative to its genre: calling it “an anti-Ocean’s heist picture, as rough-and-tumble as the starry franchise is slick” — a comparison that positions “Furies” as deliberately rejecting the glossy competence-porn aesthetic of mainstream heist cinema in favour of something rougher and more emotionally exposed.

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IndieWire’s review was similarly enthusiastic about the film’s energy, if slightly more mixed on its plotting. “The beats are familiar, the story formulaic, but the filmmaking is kinetic and alive, worthy of the largest possible audience,” the review stated, praising Kodeih for directing “the hell out of his third feature” and comparing the film’s “electric intensity and sprawling international vibe” to the work of Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

IndieWire’s review also addressed Clooney’s involvement directly, cutting against any assumption that star-producer influence shaped the film’s creative direction: “George Clooney stepped in as an executive producer, but my understanding is that his role was more to get out of the way of serious filmmaking to support it, rather than to intervene creatively.”

The review highlighted the film’s moral complexity as its most distinctive asset, noting the sisters’ motivations “can be confounding” even as the broader shape of the heist plot — which involves smuggling themselves to Turkey and eventually being exposed for keeping secrets from their co-conspirators — follows a more predictable trajectory. “You know where the story is heading,” the review concluded. “But this is, indeed, furious filmmaking.”

The Chemistry at the Center

Critics converged specifically on the relationship between the two lead performers as the film’s connective tissue. Rotten Tomatoes’ review aggregation cited critical consensus describing the film as “a messy but enjoyable watch” where, “while the nuts and bolts of the plotting might not be as tight as they could be, the off-the-scale chemistry between Nakouzi and Mroue is the glue which holds the crackling chaos together.”

That same aggregated assessment described the Beirut-set drama as “propelled by a raw, heart-pounding ferocity,” calling it “a sharp fusion of personal desperation and political rage, as specific to Lebanon’s economic crisis as it is generally, woefully recognizable.”

Entertainment outlet Next Best Picture’s review echoed that read on the film’s central achievement, describing it as delivering “an incredibly confident feature debut that turns Lebanon’s banking crisis into a thrilling, politically charged heist movie” — a formulation that keeps surfacing across the film’s early reviews: political specificity used in service of, rather than in competition with, genre thrills.