The Reluctant Fundamentalist (**3/4)

In films such as Mississippi Masala and The Namesake, Mira Nair has frequently focused on individuals caught between two worlds or identities. Here, adapting a novel by Mohsin Hamid, she adds to that a suspense element. The main character is Changez (Riz Ahmed), a Pakistani university professor suspected of being involved in the kidnapping of an American in Lahore. But he is also a former Wall Street hotshot who specialized in trimming waste (and personnel) from struggling companies. His story is told in a series of flashbacks constructed around a conversation between Changez and a journalist (Lieve Shcreiber) after the kidnapping.

There is a mutual distrust that is not, as we learn, entirely irrational. Changez fears that he will be arrested; the journalist wonders if Changez is guilty. How did the clean-cut, America-loving Princeton student become a bearded radical? Naturally, 9/11 and its aftermath is a turning point. In a welcome change from her frothier roles, Kate Hudson plays Changez’s American love interest, an artist, and Om Puri plays his father. (Puri also played the father in My Son the Fanatic, which had a theme that somewhat echoes this.)

As a meditation on Changez’s internal conflict, this is competent. As a suspense drama, it’s pretty decent, but the fact that we don’t know if Changez is guilty is partly the result of the surface-level character depiction. His turn toward an anti-American radicalism is depicted as primarily the result of unfair treatment. But surely, there is an ideological inspiration behind such a change in this intellectually gifted man. Has he adopted a radical interpretation of Islam? (We see one scene in a mosque, and that’s about it.) Has he read Noam Chomsky? Admittedly, this is difficult turf for a film. Nair has not made the definitive film on terrorism, but merely a decent yarn with a political dimension.

IMDb link

viewed 4/29/13 7:30 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 4/30/13

Four Lions (***)

There’s much debate about why there haven’t been more terrorist attacks since 9/11, but maybe it’s because a lot of would-be jihadists just aren’t that capable. In any case, a few of the writers of the political satire In the Loop have deployed the underutilized weapon of mockery against them here. Four Lions follows five young Londoners as they try to come up with a worthwhile application of their commitment to the cause. In the first scene, they attempt to make a trophy video, but the gun is too small and the guy being filmed looks more like a middle-class suburbanite than an al-Qaeda badass. Two of them head for training in Pakistan but wind up accidentally shooting Arabs. Back home, the lads bicker about whether bombing a mosque will incite Muslims to rise up or merely be the equivalent of punching yourself in the face. (According to director Christopher Morris, this particular argument is taken verbatim from secretly taped conversations of jihadis.)

Following these idiots for 90 minutes get monotonous, story-wise, but it’s consistently funny. (One of the biggest laughs comes during the credits.) By making its subjects more silly than fearsome, the film pulls off the neat trick of making them seem almost sympathetic.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz 5 [Philadelphia Film Festival] and reviewed 10/22/10