Karen Dallas Hartig
*** any spoiler will be designated with the ***.either whoever wrote the story line needs to change it, or the movie itself needs to clarify the time in question as to when the movie takes place, which is in post-911 NYC, and why the characters are interrelated. i'd prefer the latter, since the fact that it's done after 911 is only apparent in one VERY brief 3-second time spot, i.e., when you see the view of New York's skyline from Battery Park, which is where you'd see the WTC towers that are now gone. (we have a plethora of unread, stupid and/or careless, ignorant young citizens in the US today--in 2012--who would not recognize Battery Park or have one inkling that that is where you'd plainly see the WTC in the past).the plot is confusing if one does not realize that it all happens in post-911 NYC, i.e., not far distant from the time of the attack on our soil. the interrelationship between the main characters, a taxi rider who is a very messed up, lying, scheming, psychotic Caucasian female who at least works in NYC (because it is not clear that she lives there or if she herself saw or even, in her psychosis, remembers the attack), and Muslims--particularly the Allah-Akbar-praying taxi cab driver--he, himself and his also confusing family and their plight--does not clearly spell out why the woman has the driver going on wild goose chases both in the city and outside of it, in order to get her to the places where she does her dirty deeds and in so, ends up stealing money from the cab driver that is truly part of the plot, but it is not clear as day, and it should be.the reason that the cab driver so badly needs the $500 that the psycho-woman stole from his glove compartment is to cover legal and other related expenses to help his brother, whom he genuinely and earnestly explains is in Syria and who is at great risk of torture. you see, the rider, the psycho-woman, uses that knowledge as the reason behind her theft. she also uses the knowledge to create and to maintain her grandiose characterization of a highly-paid and powerful executive of a TV station in NYC with a stupid, vapid name that tells the viewer nothing at all other than to reflect upon our times and our high school graduates with who-knows-what-fires synapses in the layers of gray matter hiding out in their craniums.the worst thing about this movie is that it's not clear that all that happens in it, as well as why the characters do what they do or else are who they happen to be, relates to 911. so then, if one of the multitude of rap-taught MP3-playing-loudly-through-the-earbuds HS graduates (that should have dropped out of school when they were 10 years old, so that they could become crop pickers to replace illegal Mexican aliens in CA), watches this movie, they will not know what it's about or why the events unfold the way they do. they just will not understand it. and neither will you, if you don't realize that there is no longer a World Trade Center made up of two skyscrapers that just are not there anymore, and so far, at the time that the movie centers on, have not yet been rebuilt. because, as indicated above, the only time in the entire movie that you know it is when you can see, for too short of a time, from Battery Park, vacant ground where the towers stood in Manhattan. in other words, it is presumed that you KNOW that the motivation behind the woman rider's actions and the family ties that are shown to us, those of the Muslim cab driver, have a legitimate place within the movie. otherwise, the movie cannot stand on its own. nothing would make sense if you do not know the time frame. even the characters' interplay would not make any sense.*** SPOILER: the ending of the movie, when the taxi cab driver carries a bomb that explodes in a subway station and who he realizes too late will kill innocent passengers, as well as himself (thanks to the psycho-woman and her hatred and delusions) cannot be understood unless one knows the time and context of this movie.*** END OF SPOILER.all in all, i think that this movie is vague. the most i can say for it is that it reflects the hatred one feels creeping under their shirt collars as they walk about the massive, darkened cities of the USA that have become too dangerous and depressing to live in. it shows madness. it proves that manipulation and crime pay (theft) and that keying cars pays as retribution (for imagined deeds done against you, but which are not factual and are imagined). it shows that America has turned upside down in madness, as well as that it shows the life that Allah-fearing Muslims live (insanely, as is their choice, in the 7th century rather than in the 21st), what with prayer to Mecca required five times a day, even if they live in Egypt and happen to be rioting in the streets for democracy. ("prayer break! then we go back to the shaking of fists as we run in crowds in the street, into the view of the ABC, CBS and NBC World News TV cameras").i tend to rate movies, particularly indies, higher than one usually finds here on IMDb. but in this case, for this movie (the title of which is also confusing), so strange if one does not know CONTEXT and the TIME it happens in, the maximum number of stars i can give it is only three out of ten.3/10 by karen dallas hartig, chicago, may 2012
Robin Cook
As usual, I rented this movie last night to watch and my habit is I knew nothing about it before viewing it. I have not watched the special features on the DVD yet and may not.This movie was intriguing and then something shifted gears and I started to lose interest .. can't put my finger on it exactly. I fell asleep and finished watching it this morning. After watching the movie, I went back through it to maybe catch a few things I might have missed when sleep was overtaking me and one detail I thought was somewhat ironic (and probably intentionally symbolic though very subtle and ambiguous). In the scene where Penn (Phoebe) is gluing Trump's magazine cutout photo onto her collage, the camera swings over to her dog in front of the television that is on, and the television has an actress with a bag and a different dog than Penn's and she drops the bag into the sidewalk trash bin just as was done by Penn at the end of the movie (a prophetic parallel). It was just a short blip, but an interesting detail, which I suspect I probably missed many other details in this movie that were just as sublime.I notice that Abdel Kediche's photo is not shown on this website's movie page, which I think is sad. Both Penn and Kechiche did very fine acting and Kechiche is a very nice face to watch. I hope we see more of him in other film(s).I was unsure of what rating to give this movie since it was not an easy one to get through to the end, plus the nature of the subject content was difficult for me to stomach or believe or fathom. But, I could believe that something like this could happen and how Arabs or Muslims could be easily victimized due to the impact that 9-11 had on our society. This movie gave me pause to wonder if in reality some have been set up to receive blame for a bombing such as Abdel's character would obviously have been after the ... uh ... pieces were put together.Penn's character (Phoebe) was difficult to personally accept. I wanted to like her, but just couldn't, no matter what attempts were made to humanize her or to explain away her horrid behavior. Yes, she was mentally deranged, but I simply could not lean over the fence to even like her. Phoebe's dog had a symbolic placement, but was more of a pivotal connective tissue to thread things together, which frankly was not as strong a thread as it could/should have been. The short video blocs on the television of Sorry, Haters show that blipped now and then throughout the movie did not convey as much to me as I suspect was intended, which made the title of the movie weak.So, with the video blips and the one detail I mentioned about the actress and dog in a scene on Penn's television, I'm sure there were many other blip details through the movie that I didn't catch. As a result this movie had a great many details that simply get overlooked in a one-time viewing. Perhaps if some of the detailed blips were a little longer for the viewer's mind to register them, then this movie would have perhaps been more cohesive. This could be why I had started to lose interest .. perhaps too many visual details clustered for my brain to have time to register them with any significance ... or perhaps should have been left on the cutting room floor. Whatever it was, something just went missing for me at some point.Considering I had just finished watching Hard Candy movie earlier yesterday, which was outstanding ... this made Sorry, Haters more difficult for me to get into insofar as quality, intensity and content.All in all, I waffled between a 6 and 7 vote here for this movie. Something is definitely lacking in this movie. If you can get past the stage of where you start to lose interest like I did, then you may find you like this movie. I'd recommend it for at least one viewing since it does have merit in the content, and the casting, acting and script were good.
melograne
This moving is very polarizing. I didn't like it, because I am an Arab and a Muslim and I felt the injustice of the taxi driver more personally the most of the audience, but my friend loved it, and thought it was thought provoking. Which it is. I will not ruin the ending for the reader, but it will shock you, so be prepared. Additionally, it isn't one of those movies that is very well balanced. In a sense, I didn't really care what Philly's motivations where in the movie, and the director's efforts at showing her as unstable were a bit heavy handed and clichéd. Other than that, the movie was fine, but not exceptional and NOT about Guantanamo.
