BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

HeadlinesExotic Boring

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Prismark10 The film is a character study of (Parvez) Om Puri an immigrant taxi driver in a Yorkshire Town. Whilst his friends have become wealthy, he is still plying his trade. Like Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver) he seems a little isolated maybe even alienated, whilst dealing with the scummy strata of society. The late night drunks, drug addicts and those violent to prostitutes.He is not outwardly religious, drinks too much and is only source of pride is his son who is engaged to the daughter of a police inspector. The fact that she is white is not an issue for him and he does not notice that her father seems to be far from enthusiastic with this.Parvez in a sense is at home with the host society. You also feel that he has fallen out of lust with his middle aged wife although they have cordial relations.However he notices that his son has changed. Farid has ended his engagement, turning his back on what he views as a decadent society and mixes with a fundamentalist crowd.Its a clash of cultures which is an Everyman tale irregardless of culture of religion. The difference is here, its the older man that wants to integrate whilst the son rejects it.Parvez whilst driving a German businessman around becomes friendly with a prostitute and has relations with her. At the same time his son and his gang wants to drive prostitutes of the streets.At the end his relationship breaks down with his son and his son accuses of the father being a fanatic. His wife also suspects that he is being too friendly with prostitutes. Now he is left isolated.Hanif Kureshi based the story apparently on a family member who became a more devout Muslim. However you always have to take things with a pinch of salt when Kureshi makes such claims. However it does identify with religious fundamentalism in the light of the Rushdie affair from 1988 and the attraction of fundamentalism to the young.This is a thoughtful work from Kureshi who in his younger years was more prone to shock his audience to mask that the writing was not so good. He is helped here by the director doing his best with a low budget but the cast which includes Stellen Skarsgard and Rachel Griffiths are very good.

paul2001sw-1 Writer Hanif Kureshi has long been interested in the clash between Western decadence and fanatical Islam which, perceptively, he sees as a war that occurs not between civilisations but within individuals or, as in this film based on one of his books, families. In exploring the conflict between a secularised immigrant and his devout son, the film looks in all the right places, and is full of fine little cameo performances; but I didn't find it a wholly satisfactory affair. Om Puri's character (the father) is needed to hold the story together, but the part feels more like just one more cameo, albeit extended: it's a nicely drawn portrait of a man, but also a shallow one. Also, the film seems dated by its origins pre-dating 9/11. Kureshi refers back, albeit obliquely, to the Salman Rushie affair that first made political Islam an issue in the U.K.; subsequent terrorist atrocities have made the broad subject of this movie more pertinent, but its details less so. Perhaps the real problem is that we never really get to understand the son, who remains a mystery to us as much as he is to his father: an examination of the psychology of fanaticism, or (to cast it in a kinder light) simply that of belief, is strangely absent from the film.

emibaldoni This is a great film, however I must comment that I have found many foreign films listed as "comedy" or "humorous" when in fact they are poignant, disturbing and brilliant (thank you netflix and blockbuster). "No Man's Land" and "Happy Times" are fantastic movies that are incorrectly labeled as comedy, and "My Son the Fanatic" is regrettably categorized as comedy as well. The reality of each character's life is vivid and heart breaking. I felt so uncomfortable witnessing Parvez struggle with his peers, the German, his wife and son, and Bettina. Coupled with "My Beautiful Laundrette" you get a taste of immigrant life in Britain.

Erwino Ouwerkerk This is a great movie. Om Puri is acting as fantastic as we can aspect by now. The story deals with Muslim fanatics, one of them being taxidriver Parvez' (Puri) son. Like Christian fanatics in the US the muslimbrothers in England express the love of their god with violence against nonbelievers such as hookers. But in the end the biggest sinner of all, the one that loves a prostitute and cheats on his wife, is the only person in the movie that seems to understand the meaning of love. The story is also the conflict between an integrated father and a son that answers with religious fanaticism to the western world that still sees black people as outsiders, regardless of how much they and their parents have become decent citizens. It reminded me a lot of East and East, because of Om Puri and the conflict between a father and his children. Only in that movie it was the father who was the fanatic. You can consider that comparison as a compliment.