Diagonaldi Very well executed

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Prismark10 The Reluctant Fundamentalist directed by Mira Nair wants to examine what it is to be liked to be caught up in a cross fire of differing cultures and religion which makes you question your own identity.In the background of the kidnapping of an American diplomat, a reporter, Bobby Lincoln (Liev Schreiber) interviews a radical professor in Lahore called Changez (Riz Ahmed) who might be involved with the terrorist groups involved in the kidnapping and who is on the radar of the security services. Lincoln hopes that Changez will lead him to the kidnappers.Changez sits for an interview with Lincoln and figures out quickly that Lincoln is involved with the CIA. Changez protests his innocence and explains his life story as a Pakistani immigrant in America, who graduated from a top university and got a plum job in finance.Life was going well for Changez, he has a white American girlfriend, popular with work colleagues but things change after 9/11. Changez suffers from constant humiliation such as being strip searched at the airport, wrongful arrests, racial abuse. He finds other ethnic groups fearful in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.As time goes on Changez questions his identity, his relationship with his girlfriend suffers. During a trip to Istanbul for a hostile takeover, he meets a man who translated his father's poetry fro Urdu to Turkish and has a spiritual awakening that causes him to leave his job and travel to Pakistan to work as a professor. His teaching enlightens his students but also brought him into contact with more shady terrorist sympathisers.The film contained a lot of location shooting. The Blue Mosque in Istanbul, A fort in India and some location shooting in Pakistan as well as the USA.The central premise was intriguing but never reaches its full potential. Changez is a man who could had easily switched allegiance from his love of all things American to a Pakistani society who needs to wean off itself from imperialist nations.The resolution was rather ham fisted, tagged on to give the film some urgency and make it more thrilling. It did show elements of thoughtfulness but some of it just felt clumsy.Good performances from Ahmed, Schreiber and Kiefer Sutherland.

Alex Deleon Mira Nair (age 55) is almost more of an international than an Indian film director per se with such co-production's as Mississippi Masala (1991, Denzel Washington) and "Vanity Fair" (2004, starring Reese Witherspoon) in her kitty, but she is better known for such films as Salaam Bombay (1988) and "Kama Sutra, a Tale of Love" (1998), and "Monsoon Wedding" (2001) which remains, till date, the most successful Indian film internationally outside of the NRI market. Wedding won the Golden Lion (Best Film prize) at the Venice Film Festival making her the first female recipient ever of this award. Her film "The Namesake" premièred at Rome in 2006 and was an international critical success. "Amelia" the story of American aviatrix Amelia Earhart portrayed by Hilary Swank, came out in 2009 and was met with mixed reviews but demonstrated the director's versatility and ability to handle all-American as well as Indian subject matter. Among those who praised Earhart was noted American critic Roger Ebert (recently deceased) who described it as "a perfectly sound biopic, well directed and acted", an opinion with which this writer completely concurs. "Nair's "Reluctant Fundamentalist" opens in Lahore, Pakistan (actual location) with the kidnapping of an American diplomat and an interview by an American journalist with a young American-Pakistani college professor, Changez, suspected of inciting anti-American terrorism. The scruffy looking journalist, actually an undercover CIA agent who is fluent in Urdu, is a close friend of the kidnapped American and is hoping to get information that will secure his release. Changez agrees to be interviewed under condition that the journalist listen to his entire story through to the end. Agreed. We now learn in flashback that Changez (Genghis?) was an outstanding student at Princeton and then held down a top job in a leading New York financial firm. Not only that, his adviser there was an iconic second generation Hollywood character actor. He had everything going for him except for his name and swarthy looks when 9/11 hit. Forced to undergo humiliating racial profiling at airports and slurs from former colleagues he gradually transforms from a staunch believer in the American dream to a die hard opponent of the system that is degrading him. He returns to Pakistan as a university professor in Lahore where he incites his students to anti-American activities.Through this dialogue in the threatening atmosphere of a crowded Pakistani café we begin to see the other side of terrorism -- how our own prejudices can turn a faithful American citizen into a disillusioned "reluctant" terrorist. There is consistent tension in the film and it ends with a rousing shootout, but it leaves you asking lots of questions. Nair herself says that her purpose was to do just that --create a dialogue on a subject nobody has the answers to but everybody has an opinion on. The main question on my mind after the screening was "why did I sit all the way through this and not take an early walk?" In a lengthy lecture after the screening Nair revealed that her father was actually a Punjabi from Lahore who had to move to India after partition, which makes her feel especially close to this story and enabled her to get permission to shoot on real locations in Pakistan --most unusual for an Indian filmmaker. The central role of Changez, on the cusp of two conflicting cultures, is played convincingly by British Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed, the American journalist less convincingly -- far less convincingly -- by Liev Scheiber, Kiefer Sutherland is Changez's breezy corporate mentor in New York, and Changez's wishy-washy American love interest was Kate Hudson. Based on a scenario with too much stretch and strain and undermined by too many leaky supporting roles the entire film was pretty flounder-aroundery and failed to measure up to the promise of the title.

Qasim Zeeshan I am not a regular reviewer so please excuse my English writing.Well, yes. A very good "fiction" story. Riz Ahmad did good job. Om Puri sir, excellent as always. The story is so powerful that it really dragged me to IMDb to appreciate it. I love the Qawwali from Coke Studio from the very famous group.Most of the "Pakistani" parts are filmed in India so there are flaws. Let's come to the poor location selection, bad choices of characters and worst dialogs as always in the Hollywood movies made for South Asia. Shabana Aazmi was a huge misfit because the family is a Lahori family but Shabana's Punjabi is not that up to the mark.Secondly, the universities in Pakistan (even the worst ones) don't look like the one shown in the movie. Even if I assume it's a fiction movie, there must me something close to reality. You can check google images of "Pakistani universities".Thirdly, why, when we show people from Pakistan, there are Muslim caps everywhere :). Guys, there are hardly few people in Lahore who wear Muslim caps but I know the director have tried to show the religious extremism but it's not the best way.And Shabana says to Riz on the phone, "Electricity is not available and Eid Mubarak". I can assure that the time shown in the movie, at that time there was hardly any loadshedding in Pakistan. In fact between 1998 - 2008, most of the people forgot about power cuts. Power cuts started from 2008. Even if there is a powercut, a Princeton graduate with a huge salary can't afford a power generator in his house in Lahore :)Riz Khan's acting is good but he recited a very common verse of Iqbal that was wrong. I am sure even a lot of Indians know the correct version.I would say very good writing but poor direction and bad location choices.

johngriffin0928 Mira Nair's gift for storytelling is not often evident in this strident, one-dimensional film that manages to turn the complex emotions that surround 9/11 into a dull, clichéd story of how racism in America could cause more global horror. Some good acting can't rescue a fairly trite script that sounds like highlights of the much better novel that it was based on.Nair's Monsoon Wedding was about real people, and it remains one of the greatest films of the past 30 years. Even her Vanity Fair was more emotionally connected than this. Save yourself the 2:10 running length and pick up the book.