Critical Zone (2023) review

Drug dealer Amir (Amir Pousti) prepares his supplies in his apartment (with his beloved bulldog Mr. Fred keeping him company) and then sets out on the streets of Tehran to run "errands": selling joints, feeding the elderly cakes laced with hash, acting as a taxi to take people where they need to go, dodging the authorities and then helping out a sickly young man by mixing opium in hot tea.  Since this was shot in Iran without permission special consideration needs to be made for it - and it does have an intriguing Dark Night of the Soul atmosphere (because it actually is getting away with a "crime") - but I wish it wasn't so formless and meandering (with some gaudy stylistic excesses), and it becomes quickly tiresome watching individuals (especially our "protagonist"/"healer") constantly ingest a seemingly endless amount of chemicals.  If its "purpose" is to "show" the rest of the world that the authoritarian nation is not free of the kind of problems other countries have, mission accomplished ... and if it was created merely to tick off The Powers That Be, even better.