A young Pakistani man is chasing corporate success on Wall Street. He finds himself embroiled in a conflict between his American Dream, a hostage crisis, and the enduring call of his family's homeland.
There’s more soap than significance in Mira Nair’s disappointing drama.
Ahmed excels and the set-up is compelling but ultimately this is middle rank stuff from the Monsoon Wedding director.
It’s clear why Nair, the director of Monsoon Wedding and Mississippi Masala and a culture-clash specialist, was drawn to the project. But you leave the cinema with your teeth clenched, muttering: “at least it meant well”.
Is Changez involved? The picture is long-winded and rather predictable but Ahmed is terrific and it’s beautifully made by director Mira Nair.
Nair keeps an honourable, even-handed line in this moral fable, and delivers her best work since Monsoon Wedding.
The visual and musical contrasts between soulless corporate America and a vibrant South Asian metropolis are over-emphatic however, and we’re left with a predictably soft ‘liberal’ film, which bemoans the fundamentalists (religious, political, financial) of both East and West.
An intriguing film about the blowback involved when melting-pot America goes to war.
Despite the fact that Mira Nair’s adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s novel is ambitious and occasionally thought-provoking, it’s also rather uneven.
The film holds one's attention through the seriousness of the debate it proposes. But one's interest is diminished as the dramatic focus becomes unclear, petering out in well-meaning rhetorical confusion.
A radicalisation expert's view on The Reluctant Fundamentalist
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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