Vague Visages’ Ghost Trail review contains minor spoilers. Jonathan Millet’s 2024 movie features Adam Bessa, Tawfeek Barhom and Julia Franz Richter. Check out the VV home page for more film reviews, along with cast/character summaries, streaming guides and complete soundtrack song listings.

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Ghost Trail may be billed as a spy drama, but you won’t find James Bond here. Instead of playing into the tropes of the genre, writer-director Jonathan Millet takes a different route, one that is quiet and understated but thoroughly engrossing, thanks to a magnetic lead performance from Adam Bessa, who seems to have centuries of pain in his eyes. With an emotionally and morally complex exploration of the modern-day refugee crisis from the Middle East, Ghost Trail attempts to find balance between justice, revenge and catharsis — the three of which may not be the same thing.

At first glance, Hamid (Bessa) appears to be just another Syrian refugee of the millions that fled the country during its civil war. He grieves the loss of his wife and child (collateral of an indiscriminate bombing at his home in Aleppo), and has weekly video chats with his mother who lives in a refugee camp in Lebanon. Hamid eventually attempts to build a new life in France, but he is actually part of a clandestine organization tasked with tracking down war criminals who have fled Syria. The protagonist’s current target is one that hits especially close to home: a former prison guard who tortured him before he was released into the desert, left for dead. Hamid’s mission to find this man becomes the vessel through which he channels all of his rage, grief and trauma, and it quickly turns into an obsession, especially after Hamid sets eyes on a potential target, Harfaz (played by the fascinatingly intense Tawfeek Barhom), at a local university.

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As Hamid reports back to his colleagues, Millet provides a first glimpse into the modern world of small-scale espionage. The spy characters organize for traditional clandestine meetings on a park bench, but they also use the largely unmonitored chat functions of multiplayer online video games to meet as a group, wandering through the destruction of an unnamed Middle Eastern country as they themselves attempt to shift through the metaphorical rubble. There’s a thoughtfulness to the way that Millet approaches the spycraft aspects of Ghost Trail, bringing a new twist to genre norms. The film is also unusual amongst most espionage productions in that it tackles the aftermath of a great conflict — the period when perpetrators may be finally brought to justice. Ghost Trail grapples with one of the more complex questions that must be asked in any recovering society: where is the line between justice and revenge? And on a personal level, when should we seek retribution for the crimes committed against us, and at what point is it better for our souls to walk away?

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Although Ghost Trail is a generally downbeat film, it’s quietly thrilling in its ability to defy genre expectations. Hamid, for one, isn’t an obvious undercover agent — he’s a university literature professor, unassuming and understated but intense. The protagonist is driven by a compulsion to see justice done for himself and his family, which is a much more powerful motivation than simply working for a spy agency. Also, Millet never shows any of the action. The war crimes are only presented via witness testimonial recordings, and Hamid doesn’t go into details about his treatment while in prison. The spycraft on display is less 007 and more good, old-fashioned stalking.

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Ghost Trail is never boring — a testament to Millet’s laser-focused and tightly-edited direction. And as Hamid gets closer and closer to identifying his target, the film only grows more suspenseful. For those who may be more interested in an action-forward spy drama, Ghost Trail may prove to be too much of a slow burn. Still, the way in which Millet deftly explores spycraft through the lens of the Syrian civil war and the ensuing refugee crisis is infinitely more intriguing.

Audrey Fox (@theaudreyfox) is a features editor and film/television critic at Looper, with bylines at RogerEbert.com, Nerdist, /Film and IGN, amongst other outlets. She has been blessed by the tomato overlords with their coveted seal of approval. Audrey received her BA in film from Clark University and her MA in International Relations from Harvard University. When she’s not watching movies, Audrey loves historical non-fiction, theater, traveling and playing the violin (poorly).

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