There is no gentle introduction to Nowhere Fast. Shaheer Naqvi’s 116-minute crime thriller gives us a brief look at the tide rolling onto a beach at night before cutting to a very different image. Nyah (Sahara) is hyperventilating, splattered with blood and sitting beside the body of a man lying on a bed with a knife protruding from his neck. Whatever happened in that room, there’s clearly no going back from it.
Nyah attempts to clean herself at the sink before making a desperate telephone call to Rita (Reynada Robinson). Through her sobs, she tells her that she “did it”, and Rita immediately understands what those words mean. The dead man is Andy (Paul Kolker), Nyah’s long-time abuser and, significantly, a police officer.
Rita promises to help and makes another call. This one goes to Sonny (Mason Jendel), who is quietly eating at a diner when he’s informed that another job has come his way. He accepts for the usual rate and heads to Nyah’s home, where it quickly becomes apparent what sort of work he’s being paid to undertake.
There is something of Harvey Keitel’s Winston Wolfe from Pulp Fiction about Sonny’s initial arrival. He assesses the situation practically, asks Nyah for some aspirin and then requests a hammer. His plan is unpleasantly straightforward: break the corpse’s joints so the body can be fitted inside a bag. He even puts some music on the cassette player before getting down to business.
Then Sonny spots something that changes everything. A police badge beside the bed reveals exactly who he’s been asked to dispose of, and suddenly this isn’t another routine clean-up. He immediately curses Rita for involving him.
Elsewhere, we meet Andy’s fellow officers. Sarge (Evan Suttle), Moore (Tristan Spohn), Johnson (Faheem Rashid) and the others are hardly models of professional policing, drinking and taking cocaine outside a bar while talking about their colleague and Nyah, whom they know as the woman Andy was seeing on the side. They don’t yet know their friend is dead, but that won’t remain the case for long.
Sonny understandably wants nothing more to do with the situation once he realises a police officer is lying dead in the bedroom. Nyah isn’t prepared to let him simply walk away, however. She points a gun at him and makes it clear that she’s already killed once and will do it again if necessary. Sonny’s response is unexpected. He isn’t particularly frightened of dying. Nyah ultimately can’t pull the trigger and lowers the weapon, but the encounter tells us plenty about the desperation of both characters.
Sarge, meanwhile, becomes concerned when Andy doesn’t answer his telephone and heads for Nyah’s home. This is where Nowhere Fast asks us to make one of its bigger leaps. One unanswered call is apparently enough for Sarge to arrive at the home of Andy’s girlfriend, break inside with his weapon drawn and search the property. It feels excessively convenient, particularly because nothing we’ve seen up to this point gives him sufficient reason to immediately assume something terrible has happened.
After finding Andy’s corpse, Sarge’s colleagues then arrive and casually enter the bedroom while talking amongst themselves. Again, the behaviour doesn’t entirely convince. The film wants these men to be corrupt and dangerous officers, but they rarely feel like police officers at all. Instead, they come across as straightforward criminals who happen to carry badges.
It’s an important distinction because corrupt police characters can be considerably more frightening when there’s still some recognisable trace of the institution and authority they’re abusing. Training Day is an obvious example of how effective that can be. Here, the criminality is pushed so far forward that the police element occasionally feels almost incidental.
Nevertheless, Andy’s discovery provides the film with its engine. Sarge wants revenge, Nyah needs to escape and Sonny has become involved in something far more dangerous than the job he originally accepted. What follows is an overnight chase as Nyah and Sonny attempt to stay ahead of Sarge and his crew.
Nowhere Fast Looks Far More Expensive Than It Is
If there is one aspect of Nowhere Fast that immediately exceeds expectations, it’s the presentation. The production information lists a budget of just $35,000, and if that figure is accurate, director Shaheer Naqvi and his team have achieved something remarkable. This simply doesn’t look or sound like a film made for that amount of money.
Cinematographer Ana Lorant gives much of the film an attractive nighttime aesthetic, making excellent use of streetlights, vehicle headlights and the industrial surroundings. There are some particularly impressive drone shots above a bridge at night, with moving vehicles illuminating the darkness before the camera tilts upwards and reveals the town stretching beyond it.
The colour grade complements Lorant’s photography beautifully. There are moments when Nowhere Fast recalls the nocturnal cool of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, not because Naqvi is simply copying that film, but because both understand how effective an urban environment can look after dark when colour and artificial lighting are carefully controlled.
Much of the framing is similarly accomplished. There are images here that would comfortably belong in a production made for considerably more money. The quality isn’t completely consistent, however. Occasionally, an impressive sequence will give way to a much more basic locked-off composition with an actor positioned centrally and doing relatively little within the frame. Some additional blocking and more adventurous camera positioning could have maintained the visual standard established elsewhere.
Still, those moments stand out precisely because so much of the remaining film looks excellent. This is an ambitious production for its reported resources, and Naqvi certainly hasn’t approached it as though he were making a tiny independent feature. Alfonso Flores’ sound design also contributes to that professional finish, while Giovanni Galvez provides the score.
Sahara and Mason Jendel are another major reason the film works. Nyah begins the story in a state of absolute panic, but she’s more than simply somebody for Sonny to rescue. She has already taken drastic action before we meet him and repeatedly demonstrates that desperation can make her dangerous.
Jendel makes Sonny an interesting counterbalance. He’s introduced as someone apparently accustomed to dealing with gruesome situations, yet discovering Andy’s identity immediately exposes the limits of what he’s willing to become involved in. His strangely relaxed response to Nyah threatening his life also hints that this isn’t a man with an uncomplicated relationship with his own existence.
As their escape continues, the circumstances force Nyah and Sonny together. Their relationship consequently becomes more important than the mechanics of simply staying ahead of Sarge. Both are trying to get away from lives that have trapped them, although for very different reasons, and the possibility of surviving the night offers something beyond merely avoiding the people chasing them.
Reynada Robinson also makes an impression as Rita, the person connecting Nyah and Sonny in the first place. She’s the one Nyah trusts enough to call immediately after killing Andy and the one capable of finding somebody who can make the resulting problem disappear. That establishes an intriguing underworld around the characters without requiring lengthy exposition.
Where Nowhere Fast struggles most is its running time. At 116 minutes, this is nearly a two-hour film built around a story that naturally demands urgency. Nyah and Sonny are racing through a single night with violent men closing in on them, so the narrative should feel as though the clock is constantly working against them. There are stretches where that pressure loosens and the film begins to feel longer than necessary.
A tighter edit could have made a considerable difference. Removing some material and pushing the story closer to the 90 or 100-minute region might have produced a leaner thriller without sacrificing the relationship developing between Nyah and Sonny. When the film is moving, it moves very well. It simply doesn’t maintain that momentum consistently across the full running time.
The other significant weakness remains Sarge and his fellow officers. Evan Suttle certainly gives the film an aggressive antagonist, but the screenplay, written by Suttle and Jendel, pushes these corrupt cops into such overt villainy that some credibility is lost. Giving them more of the behaviour and outward professionalism we’d associate with actual officers could arguably have made their corruption considerably more sinister.
Those issues don’t erase how much Nowhere Fast gets right. This is stylish, confident independent filmmaking with two strong central performances and production values that belie its reported $35,000 budget. Naqvi and Lorant have managed to turn limited resources into a visually impressive nighttime crime thriller rather than allowing the budget to dictate the ambition of the film.
The feature has already received festival recognition, winning Best Narrative Feature at the 2026 Boomtown Film Festival and Best Texas Narrative Film at the 2025 Billy the Kid Film Festival. Sahara also received Best Lead Actress at the 2026 Golden State Film Festival, while the film was an official selection at the 2025 Amarillo International Film Festival.
Nowhere Fast isn’t quite as streamlined as its title suggests. At almost two hours, it would benefit from losing some weight, while its corrupt police officers needed greater credibility to make their pursuit truly convincing. Yet the positives comfortably outweigh those shortcomings. Sahara and Mason Jendel make Nyah and Sonny characters worth following through the night, and Shaheer Naqvi delivers a film with considerably more visual confidence than its budget has any right to suggest.
With a tighter cut and a little more restraint around its antagonists, this could have been an even stronger thriller. As it stands, Nowhere Fast is an impressive example of what talented independent filmmakers can achieve with limited resources, and one that looks like it cost many times the amount reportedly spent making it.
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