In The Land Of Lost Angels

As The Dead Thing director Elric Kane has pointed out, los Angeles by night is a different beast. Capture it by night, in black and white, through the windscreen of a car, and it immediately feels as if one has gone back to the 1940s. The blacks are lush and heavy, the whites almost sparkling, but everything else, from characters to dialogue, is in shades of grey.

It’s the perfect setting for Bishrel Mashbat’s noirish first feature, made before his delicate relationship drama Beloved but only now reaching a mass audience. The story concerns itself with two friends, both Mongolian immigrants, whom we first get to know as they drive around discussing elements of their plan. Soon Ankhaa (Erdenemunkh Tumursukh) is on the phone to his dad, telling him that there will be no need to sell the house now because he just got a really good job with a big American company. His boss will advance him some money so they can pay for his brother’s medical treatment. Everything will be alright. It’s clear that this is not where the money will be coming from.

The film revolves around a kidnap plot, with Ankhaa and his friend Orgil (Iveel Mashbat) taking the son of a wealthy man hostage in order to extract a ransom. The hostage (Mike Cali) – in his early twenties but a kid from their perspective – is frightened and compliant. Orgil makes threats. Ankhaa, feeling bad about it, tries to be as decent and supportive as he can. As a result, a bond forms. Tragically, a single ill-considered word turns everything upside down, and when Orgil argues that, for the sake of their safety and Ankhaa’s brother’s life, they should kill the kid, the bond between the kidnappers begins to fracture.

Tangled into this are questions of cultural identity. Initially, Ankhaa and Orgil seem bound together by their experience as immigrants in a society where the dream of making it big has fallen short. Orgil, however, seems more at ease with US society, and his approach to the kidnapping suggests that he has taken on some US values. Ankhaa seems more isolated, just a stranger passing through whose heart is with his family far away. Perhaps part of the appeal of the friendship, for him, is a feeling of cultural connectedness; but might he actually have more in common with the young white man tied up in the bathtub?

In the background, we hear a television debate asking if men are in crisis. Ankhaa and Orgil sit around in the apartment they’ve rented, talking about K-pop – one of those conversations whose real purpose seems to be mutual confirmation of heterosexuality and approved masculine values. It’s not played as comedy – Mashbat keeps the tension tight throughout – but there’s a dry observational humour to it. We are drawn into that living room just as we were drawn into the car, kept close as if we were a part of the gang. Later, when a drop-off is taking place, we will watch it from a position which again makes us a co-conspirator rather than the more distant voyeur that cinema more commonly positions us as.

The story is simple. Mashbat’s approach to it is much more sophisticated. The performances are good all round, and the principal location, that apartment, concentrates a lot of energy in a small space. This is an exceptionally good first film, and an effective thriller by any measure. Catch it if you can.

Reviewed on: 09 Mar 2026