The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2013)

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

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.

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.

This movie was made with a good script, remarkable actors and fine filming. However, all that talent was wasted on promoting false ideas. The hero of the film is Changez, a gifted young Pakistani who got upset with the treatment he received in America after 9/11. That was the main factor that pushed him back to Pakistan where he becomes a reluctant fundamentalist. The movie promotes the popular idea that Americans, by the way they treat Muslims, make them enemies of our state. There are many ethnic groups in America that at some time became very upset. During WWII thousands of American Japanese were rounded up and placed in internment camps. None of them became a terrorist. Chinese, Irish,Italian,Polish, Russian Jewish immigrants were very upset with the treatment they got during their first years in America. Indians and blacks were justifiably very upset. Did they become terrorists? The fact is that displeasure with the treatment Muslims get in America is not what drives some of them to fundamentalism. They become fundamentalists because of their religious beliefs. The other false idea promoted by that movie is anti-corporate resentment. The film shows corporate greed, heartlessness and indifference to human plight that Changez eventually rejects. At one point he has to lay off a third of the workforce in a Philippine factory. The creators of the movie apparently condemn that cruel corporative practice. However, they forget that the same corporation continues to employ the remaining 2/3 of the workers and allows them to feed their families. Changez's job was to improve the effectiveness of corporations his firm tested. During the movie he uses a cell phone, a device that was invented, developed and manufactured by a corporation. Without the effectiveness of that corporation, blamed in the movie for greed, Changez probably would've used a phone booth, and not 1/3 but the entire 100% of the phone manufacturing workers would not have a job. Probably that's the ideal world of creators of that movie: everybody is unemployed, poor and happy. Money is not all, they say!

In 2011 Lahore Pakistan, an American professor Anse Rainier is kidnapped by extremists. CIA operative Bobby Lincoln (Liev Schreiber) interviews the professor's colleague Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed) who is suspected of being involved. Changez tells his story. Back in 2000, Changez from a well known family with little money. He gets a job at a Wall Street investment firm Underwood Samson. He has a relationship with an Erica (Kate Hudson). His boss Jim Cross (Kiefer Sutherland) is impressed with his work. However things change after 9/11.This movie tries to portray the events of recent history through the eyes of a westernized Pakistani working in the US. If it stuck with just that, there may be a very compelling movie. It also tries to be a spy terrorist thriller. Again maybe there is a good movie there especially with the good location shoots. The back and forth between the two causes some difficulties. It doesn't help that the interviewing part is so stationary and boring. There are too many slow scenes and dissipates any tension or suspense.