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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

The Sandwich Nazi has lots of fascinating layers

THE SANDWICH NAZI (Lewis Bennett). 72 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (May 5). See listing. Rating: NNN


Two minutes into The Sandwich Nazi, it’s clear why Lewis Bennett wanted to make it: its eponymous subject, Salam Kahil, is absolutely fascinating.

A foul-mouthed exhibitionist with a heart of gold, Kahil makes meals for the homeless when he’s not regaling his customers with vivid tales of his past as an international escort – or berating them for bringing their phones into his Vancouver deli.

And there’s more, as we’ll learn over the course of Bennett’s documentary. If his many stories are to be believed, Kahil fled his repressive Lebanese family as a youth to become a globetrotting libertine. He wound up in Vancouver in his early 30s, switching to restaurants when he realized he was past his hedonistic prime.

Bennett is happy to indulge Kahil in his stories, but he also notes other aspects of the man’s life – his love of art, his ill health after a car accident, the family he left behind in Beirut. 

I wish the film had made a little more of those digressions, since they hint at a complexity and emotional depth Kahil himself resists expressing. But perhaps Bennett is so enthralled by this larger-than-life character that he doesn’t really want to know how much of Kahil is just a performance.

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