The Mushroom (Arabic: عيش الغراب, transliterated as Eish el-Ghorab) is an Egyptian crime thriller film released on June 9, 1997, by the studio Pop Art Films. The film is directed by Samir Seif and stars Nour El-Sherif, Yousra, Mustafa Metwalli, Mahmoud Kabil, Ezzat Abou Ouf, and Nada Bassiouny.
Contents
Cast
Nour El-Sherif (Mustafa Sharaf El-Din)
Yousra (Azza al-Mansouri)
Mustafa Metwalli (Radwan)
Mahmoud Kabil (Big Boss)
Ezzat Abou Auf (Akram Sabry)
Nada Bassiouny (Ines)
Ezzat al-Mashad (Helmy Abdelhafez)
Amr Mahdi (Giuliano)
Sabina (Jackie)
Yasser Shalaby
Hussein Mounir
Ashraf Salah
Ahmed Fouad
Jamal Shaheen
Bahjat al-Samri
Nowruz Hani
Synopsis
Mustafa Sharaf El-Din, an officer in President Anwar Sadat’s bodyguard, is humiliated by his failure to prevent the President’s assassination, in which Mustafa is wounded. Feeling sidelined at work, he drinks his failure away and is divorced by his wife, Dr. Azza al-Mansouri from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who was unable to get him sober and takes their daughter Maryam with her.
Azza remarries to a businessman named Akram Sabry, a connection that together with her Foreign Ministry career gets her named Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Akram owns a tourist resort in Nuweiba and trades stocks, but that is a front for more nefarious pursuits, including arms trafficking, in which he is always accompanied by his bodyguard Giuliano. Amidst the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Akram buys a load of weapons-grade plutonium for one million dollars and sets out to sell it for fifty million to the highest bidder, be it a terrorism sponsor or even a terrorist group itself. He hides the contraband in a cave on the Sinai Peninsula, not far from the resort, and hires burly Bedouin guards to protect both the fuel rods and drugs placed as a decoy.
Word of the deal spreads, and the Egyptian authorities seek to keep the matter a secret until the time is opportune to seize the plutonium, in part to protect the profits of the tourism industry, and foreign governments try to buy it to keep it out of terrorist hands, including that of Israel. An international mission, led by a man known only as the “Big Boss,” resorts to entrapping Akram by impersonating journalists for an Arab television station and heading to his house for an ostensible interview with Azza on her appointment to Permanent Representative. The gambit goes awry when the team drugs and kidnaps Maryam, believing her to be Akram's daughter. Azza calls the police, but on Akram's return he tells the officers that the girl had been released upon their calling him when they realized she wasn't Akram's daughter.
Questioning Akram's story, Azza turns to the hopelessly drunken Mustafa, who tries to save himself and his daughter with the help of his old school friend Radwan. While Radwan rehabilitates Mustafa and retrains him to shoot, the Big Boss calls Azza to convince her that Akram should sell them the plutonium, and she tells them that Maryam was not his daughter. Mustafa contacts a former partner on the force, Hossam, who works in private security and contracts with Akram's resort, to investigate his workplace, and he reports little of suspicion except for an assistant named Jackie who is carrying food and ammunition to the desert. Following Jackie leads Mustafa to the caves, where his binoculars catch the guards and the drugs, which he reveals to an unconvinced Azza. Major General Helmy Abdelhafez, Assistant Minister of State Security, summons Mustafa and Azza after spotting their investigations, confirms the material as radioactive, and asks them to stay away.