At first, Very Big Shot appears to be just another drug-thug film, but after a while it gradually and slyly transforms into a satire on filmmaking, the cult of TV celebrity and, ultimately, electoral politics.
Ziad, Joe and Jad are brothers who have inherited their family’s Beirut pizza delivery business. In the opening scene, Ziad, a drug dealer, murders another gangster. Jad agrees to take the rap because he is a juvenile and will be released from prison after only five years. By the time he gets out, the brothers are supplementing their income by delivering “special” pizzas that include packets of cocaine.
Working for a high-level gangster, Ziad is sent across the border into Syria to deliver a truckload of he knows not what. When he gets there, he correctly figures out that the gangsters plan to snuff him out, so he kills his Syrian contacts instead and drives the truck back to Beirut. When they unload the cargo in secret, Ziad and his brothers discover that it contains a vast quantity of Captagon amphetamine powder that, if sold properly, could drastically improve the brothers’ financial situation. Of course, there’s the problem that the drugs really belong to the big boss, who is suspicious of Ziad’s story that the boss’ Syrian contacts stole the cargo. Ziad needs to get rid of the drugs as quickly as possible, but the only way to do so is to drive them back to Syria, which seems out of the question, or to fly them to Iraqi Kurdistan, which is the other accessible market for Captagon.
While trying to collect from one of the brothers’ special clients, filmmaker Charbel, Ziad learns that film cans containing exposed film are exempted from x-ray screening at the airport. So he agrees to produce Charbel’s pet project in order to provide cover for his export of the amphetamines inside cans of film. Shades of Bullets over Broadway, as Ziad takes a liking to filmmaking. After the shooting of one scene leads to a street riot, Ziad begins appearing as a guest on TV news and talk shows. But the big boss and his henchman are still after Ziad.
