Riz Ahmed, on a roll, takes a noir turn in ‘Tiny Lights’
Riz Ahmed isn’t the hard-living gumshoe of old in City of Tiny Lights, and religion and corruption play as big a role as bullets and broads.
It has so much nuance that the London-born actor calls the mystery movie noir 2.0, “where men are allowed to have feelings and women aren’t double-crossing vixens.”
Directed by Pete Travis and receiving its world premiere Sept. 15 at the Toronto International Film Festival, City of Tiny Lights casts Ahmed as Tommy Akhtar, a British private eye hired to find a missing Russian prostitute. The unraveling whodunit involves local business types, Islamic holy men and Tommy’s checkered past, which comes to the fore when he reconnects with an old flame (Billie Piper).
In addition to his role as a naïve murder suspect in HBO’s acclaimed The Night Of, Ahmed played a tech entrepreneur in Jason Bourne and helps steal the Death Star plans as former Imperial pilot Bodhi Rook in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (in theaters Dec. 16).
Ahmed, 33, talks to USA TODAY about putting a new spin on the detective genre.
Q City of Tiny Lights works as a nice chaser for the moody The Night Of.
A It feels familiar, drawing on elements like a morality tale and touching on films like
A Christmas Carol: You’re haunted by the ghosts of your past. Also classic noir movies (and) those nocturnal neon nightscapes from people like (Hong Kong filmmaker) Wong Kar-wai. But it refurbishes those by center-staging characters you might not normally see.
Q And while there are noir aspects, it never feels like a throwback.
A Having a contemporary British film that’s about contemporary Britain is itself quite rare. We tend to mock an image of ourselves that revolves around people running around country estates in the 1700s and wearing bonnets, but actually I believe our most exciting stories aren’t behind us. They’re going on right now and ahead of us as well.
Q What traits in Tommy did you find appealing ?
A I liked the idea of this character who’s quite sensitive and emotional, but because of his work and those scars, he’s put up these walls of trust. He’s never really forgiven himself for certain things in his past.
Q Did he offer a different acting challenge than, say, Naz from The Night Of?
A Playing Naz involved having to work out every night after shooting until 10 or 11 p.m. (Laughs.) And playing Tommy involved chain-smoking. Chainsmoking is just as physically challenging as working out, in completely opposite ways.
Q Is Bodhi closer to Naz or Tommy in terms of personality?
A He’s nothing like either of them, and that’s what really excites me. Naz is somebody who’s at a very formative stage in his life — he’s stuck in a prolonged adolescence. Tommy is a character whose formative choices have in many ways been made, which is why he roams around in the back alleys of life and tries to solve other people’s problems and open doors for them. I don’t want to say too much about Bodhi, but all the characters in Rogue One come to the table with history and baggage. They’re all forced to make tough choices.