Gino Cox "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" attempts to proclaim its profundity by drawing a half-baked allegory between the fundamentals of American entrepreneurial spirit and the fundamentals of Islamic faith. But it ignores the fundamentals of filmmaking. If you're going to spend fifteen million dollars on a film and hope to earn more than three million at the box office, you should really invest a tiny portion of that money in a tripod. These incessant jiggly-cam shots are very distracting and shatter the audience's willful suspension of disbelief by reminding them they are watching a movie. But the real cost and benefit of using some sort of rigid support system is that it forces filmmakers to plan their shots. The mise en scène is functional, but not inspired. Image stability was a serious problem. Some of the shots look like the operator was trying to balance on a Gyro Board, which weren't even available in 2012. You need to deliver on what Snyder called the promise of the premise. The protagonist meets with a writer who has a simple question for which there is a simple answer. Instead the protagonist tells the writer that he must listen to his whole story from the very beginning before making a decision. He then launches into a rambling discourse that seems like an overwrought apologia at times and a travelogue at other, accentuated by a lot of music that is undecipherable to anybody who doesn't speak Urdu. It all seems very authentic and much of it would be quite interesting in a different film, but it has little relevance to the inciting incident. The film is overly long at 130 minutes. It could easily be trimmed to 90 minutes or less. The B-story isn't at all credible. Kate Hudson is only three and a half years older than Riz Ahmed, but her makeup and wardrobe did her no favors. At thirty, Ahmed looks like he could actually be a twenty-year-old college senior in the early scenes. But Hudson looks closer to forty than twenty. Her character is a self-centered aggressively grungy dingbat nutjob spoiled brat with a lot of baggage from a prior relationship and imprudent choices. She wears more clothes in her bedroom scene than Pakistani women wear going to market. Her hair, dyed black possibly to avoid a cliché about Asian men being fascinated with blondes, looks only marginally better than Maggie Grace's hair in "Lockout." Even though opposites often attract, the relationship isn't the least bit credible or interesting. Changez's crisis of conscience is not credible. One can understand the cause and the offense he takes. But this is a man of action who aspires to change the world. He's a brilliant analyst who has already his talent for developing creative business strategies. But instead of offering a brilliant counterproposal that would be more consonant with his ideals and values, he behaves in an unexpected and inexplicable manner. Cross's response also seems uncharacteristic. At one point Changez receives a promotion that doesn't really seem earned. We see that he is hard working and dedicated, but we don't see an accomplishment that would justify the promotion. If he's promoted, there must be a middle level of management, but we don't see them do anything. The ending seems contrived. Bobby's actions are inconsistent with his behavior throughout the earlier scenes. Much simpler outcomes seem much more likely. Somebody fires a rifle at a target about fifty meters away and misses by about a meter, but a gun accidentally discharges with deadly accuracy. The discharge makes no sense either. Modern pistols are certified drop safe, meaning they won't discharge if dropped from a height of 101 centimeters, and the person had enough training to know he shouldn't have had his finger on the trigger. The movie is a political thriller with few thrills and little insight into the main character's evolving political viewpoints. I did like one line where a professor talked about the American dream and then asked the class if there was a Pakistani dream that didn't involve leaving the country. The insights into daily life in Pakistan and the work of a valuation analyst seemed authentic, although the scenes of Pakistani culture were unnecessarily long and the office scenes lacked depth. The performances were good, although it's difficult to deliver a convincing performance when aspects of the story seem contrived and the camera motion constantly reminds the audience that none of this is real.

blanche-2 Riz Ahmed, Liev Schreiber, Kate Hudson, and Kiefer Sutherland star in "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," based on the novel of the same name and directed by Mira Nair. In 2011, an American professor in Pakistan is kidnapped. When the U.S. embassy receives a ransom note, it's in the form of a video, demanding the release of detainees and money.An American journalist (Schreiber) who is a CIA informant obtains an interview with a suspect in the kidnapping, one Changez Khan (Ahmed), a professor at the same university.informant in Pakistan, arranges to interview a colleague of Rainer, Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed), who he suspects is involved in the kidnapping. Changez asks to tell his story from the beginning.He comes from a good family, his father a known poet, but money is scarce in his family. Changez wins a scholarship to Princeton and afterward is hired by a valuation firm on Wall Street.Changez soon proves how gifted he is at the job, and his boss (Sutherland) puts him on the fast track for promotion.Meanwhile, Changez meets a photographer, Erica (Hudson) and the two become involved, though she is not yet over the death of her fiancé. They break up after her art show, where he feels betrayed, as she used elements of their relationship.After the World Trade Center falls, things change. Ahmed is strip- searched at the airport and interrogated. He is arrested upon leaving his office one day. He grows a beard, saying it reminds him of where he comes from, and it's no doubt an act of defiance. After refusing to close a publishing house in Istanbul, Changez loses his job and returns to Pakistan. The question is, did he take up arms? After loving America, does he now hate it?One reason Mira Nair made this film was to show another side of Pakistan, that of a vibrant country filled with youth and educated people, not simply a country filled with poverty and violence.It's a thought-provoking film about the effect of terrorism on the innocent, not only in our country but in others as well. Ahmed, who wanted the American dream, becomes a victim of racial profiling, of suspicion, of fear.The point that Ahmed makes is that every person is made up of many qualities, no one is just a criminal, a professor, a terrorist, and there are no simple answers.The movie feels long, it's talky, but the acting is superb and draws you right into the film. When Ahmed goes back to Pakistan for his sister's wedding, he goes into a mosque. Without him speaking, you know he's thinking, maybe back here is where I belong.It's one thing to be a terrorist, to be rooted out and arrested, but to leave a country because you don't feel you belong there any longer and no one wants you there is sad. Alas, it's been going on for centuries with no end in site.

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.

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.