‘Inheritance’ review: Spies (and family drama) in disguise

If you’ve ever wanted to see a globe-trotting spy movie shot from the side of a woman’s head using an iPhone 13, Inheritance is here.

After caring for her dying mother, New Yorker Maya (Phoebe Dynevor) accepts her father’s offer to work for him in selling real estate just to get a change of scenery. She gets more than she bargained for when it turns out that real estate is just a front for international money laundering used to disrupt foreign governments. Her absent father, Sam (Rhys Ifans), is a spy. Apparently abandoning her at a young age was not enough of a tip-off that she cannot trust him. When he gets kidnapped, Sam tells her that she’s the only one who can save him. Will she save the life of the only parent she has left or finally prioritize herself? 

Daddy daughter drama.

Dyvenor’s performance as Maya feels very early Dakota Johnson—minimalist, casual and low-key. Maya stumbles around Manhattan shoplifting, having random hookups, dangling outside of window ledges while smoking a cigarette, and grappling with her loss of purpose in the wake of losing her only mission: caring for her cancer-stricken mother.  Maya’s most defining traits are being comfortable navigating crowded city streets and stealing. A movie does not need to gas us up to believe that we could outwit international law enforcement and evade seasoned criminals on their home turf as a tourist. Maya is basically going through an identity crisis, shuffles off trying on her mother’s profession as a saintly caretaker and is ready to take a spin as her dad, an “international businessman.”

Ifans exists to ground the thriller and does his job by keeping the audience on the hook as much as Sam lulls Maya into trusting him. He acknowledges his mistakes, apologizes, flatters, makes big promises, and delivers enough to seem credible. Ifans sports an American accent reminiscent of a more-affable Kiefer Sutherland without the growl. When Maya catches him in his first lie, it strains credibility that she wouldn’t hear alarm bells and see red flags, but whose dad doesn’t have two different last names with matching passports? Here’s where most New Yorkers would dip and suddenly rush back home claiming that they forgot to turn off the oven. Instead, she stays for his sales pitch about how he’s a good spy who helped with the Arab Spring and advocate for LGTBQ+ policies in other countries—um, who wants to tell him that he could have stayed home for that?

The true New Yorker is Jess (Kersti Bryan), Maya’s sister, who does not exchange a single word with their father and keeps her butt at home. The better movie would be following Jess as she balanced her duties as a wife to Doug (Byron Clohessy), new mother and sister to a reckless dumbass, i.e. a sidequel to His Three Daughters where the sister packs up their deceased mother’s apartment while occasionally making increasingly more harried calls to Maya. She inadvertently triggers Maya’s defiance when she suggests that maybe Maya is not up for the job. If you watch Inheritance, you will recognize that Maya treats Jess just like their father. 

Mission failed.

If any of Maya’s “globetrotting” sounds interesting, it’s not. Perhaps some moviegoers want a more accessible spy who doesn’t fight, use weapons or speak multiple languages, but uses her wit and sticky fingers to outsmart everyone. Sure it’s more realistic, but so is getting stuck in a soiled jail cell afraid for your life. If Inheritance wanted to be authentic, it would’ve further developed the themes of grief and loss and the futile efforts of substituting an inadequate parent for a beloved one. It was a missed opportunity that could have elevated the spy craft, especially considering all the online quips along the lines of “people will literally traffic state secrets and violate international law instead of going to therapy.” Instead, Mom’s memory gets tossed overboard for dull daddy issues, and anyone will be able to guess the various plot twists that Maya will discover on her illicit scavenger hunt.

There is an underdeveloped Buddhist theme. Their unnamed mother was a practicing Buddhist, and when Maya comes to a disillusioning realization, she visits a temple in South Korea, the most stunning shot in Inheritance, because as she enters, a mass of lights hang overhead, and it focuses Maya to her true mission. Unfortunately, that mission is less transcendent than the imagery would lead you to expect. Similarly, an exchange with Emily (Ciara Baxendale), a missionary who cares more about works than faith, tries to solve Maya’s identity crisis, and anyone hoping that she was going to be a part of the global underworld will be sorely disappointed. Though the religious theme offers an opportunity to showcase the most visually arresting scene, it should have been ditched if it didn’t elevate the narrative since Maya is much more down to earth in her journey to self-realization. 

Co-writer/director Neil Burger (Divergent, Limitless) seems to think that it was enough to have a gimmick, shoot without permits to make Inheritance more real and gritty, but it’s not. Dyvenor actually drinking tequila and running from cops in scenes doesn’t add “realism.” While moralizing about breaking laws is so pointless in a day and age when a literal felon is the President of the United States, it’s still about consent. The people who did not consent to be in a film will not profit from it. There could still be lawsuits in Burger’s future, and for what: a forgettable soporific film. If only he had injected some of that sense of thrill and genuine danger into his movie. 

The bottom line.

Enjoying Inheritance will be proportional to how much you enjoy staring at Dynevor. It is ultimately a shallow, anti-climactic affair that uses espionage to thinly disguise a predictable daughter confronting her disillusionment with her dad. The best revenge is being Jess: not wasting any time when you know someone, or something will not be good for you. Be like Jess, who is probably watching The Americans for being far more realistic. Real life people accused of leaking classified information like Reality Leigh Winner should not watch it, lest she finds herself screaming at the screen. The real world is not so kind to young women who violate federal law.

Inheritance is now playing in select theaters. You can watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of IFC Films. You can read more reviews by Sarah G. Vincent here.