RULE BREAKERS - Mark Reviews Movies

Rule Breakers, Angel Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 6, 2025

In the big picture, the story of Rule Breakers doesn't have a happy ending. How could it? The movie dramatizes the creation of an all-girl robotics team from Afghanistan and follows them on a series of international competitions for high school students who build, design, and program robots.

The screenplay by director Bill Guttentag, Jason Brown, and Elaha Mahboob, the last of whom was one of the co-founders of the team, ends a year or two before the Taliban would retake control of Afghanistan. A brief text coda reminds us that such an enterprise would no longer be possible in that country, because the Taliban government bans secondary education for all girls.

One watches this movie, then, with more information than its characters, who do have to face various forms of sexism and abuse—from insults, to death threats, to an actual assassination attempt—in their efforts to show that girls from Afghanistan can participate and excel in science and technology. The worst is yet to come, though, if not for the actual team members themselves, then surely for every girl in their homeland.

The movie, however, tries to put an optimistic spin on this story, which is, admittedly, earned to some degree. The Afghan Dreamers, as the team was and still is called (albeit no longer based in Afghanistan, for the obvious and aforementioned reasons), did prove themselves over and over again, both in competition around the world and, in a way, by simply existing in the face of so many naysayers and obstacles. This is a nice and mostly pleasant story, and that feels counter to a significant part of reality.

With all of that in mind, one understands why the filmmakers felt the need to dramatize this tale (which was featured in a documentary from a few years ago) and to give it a hopeful spin. We want our inspiring true stories, well, to inspire us, and in its best moments, this one does.

It's also, unfortunately, too shallow to really give us a sense of its characters, what they have to confront, and how their various endeavors come together. At a certain point in the narrative, the movie more or less becomes a highlight reel of the team's assorted robots and participation in competitions throughout the world. We can tell there's so much more to everyone and everything in this tale, but instead of diving into those details, the screenplay only gives us the basics.

That starts with Roya Mahboob (Nikohl Boosheri), who developed an interest in computers as a kid, when the teacher brought a pair of them into the classroom for the first time in 1999. The girls weren't allowed to use them. Several years and a change in government later, Roya started teaching herself how to use a personal computer, took a coding class in college, and started teaching computers herself after graduation. Seeing so many girls want to learn technology but, even with freedom to do so, still be hesitant to do so inspires her—along with her brother Ali (Noorin Glamgaus) and friend Esin (Amber Afzali), whose characters might merge to form the real-world role of co-screenwriter—to start the robotics team.

Despite a large amount of interest (The script has that clichéd moment when the team's creators enter an empty room, only to discover that all of the girls moved themselves to a bigger room because there were too many of them), only four girls actually follow through. Of them, only Taara (Nina Hosseinzadeh), whose father runs an auto shop where the team meets, really plays a significant role in the story—presumably because the screenplay becomes so invested in showing us the team's rise to success instead of actually showing us the team and its members' lives.

That shorthanded brand of storytelling is a significant issue for the tale, of course, but initially, it doesn't feel that way. We watch the team overcome challenges, such as customs officials holding their robotics kit out of worry that it could be a weapon, and too many doubters to number. Without an official kit, the team has to make do with what they have on hand, and the joy they display after their makeshift robot, made from scrap parts, actually functions is infectious.

So, too, is the sense of support and camaraderie as soon they do make it a competition. Surrounded by fellow young tech enthusiasts, the girls find nothing but help and words of encouragement from the competition, and the idea of the world opening up for Taara and her teammates is a moving one. It's a shame the script basically comes to a halt in what it wants to do and say at that point.

From there, it really is just a repetitive series of montages and scenes at these competitions, because Roya and the girls want to be more than simply examples of courage in the face of adversity. Rule Breakers leaves its characters and the specifics of its story behind, as the narrative forms a pattern of results and the occasional barricade (It almost seems as if the most significant one is delivery mishaps). That's even before the hasty conclusion, which omits so much of why this story might have some greater emotional and thematic impact. In trying to lift our spirits, though, the movie misses all of that by ignoring harsh reality.

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