The Worst Film Ever

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

It is so daring, it is so ambitious, it is so thrilling and weird and pointed and powerful. I never knew where it was going.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

An excruciating film, one that should be preserved to give future generations a glimpse of the underside of American life in the first decade of the 21st century. It depicts the effect of the disaster of 9-11 on those for whom it provided a fleeting moment of release from a life that was inescapable silent suffering.Robin Wright Penn, became such a person, as Phoebe, whom we are introduced to as a successful creative director who connected with the most unlikely of persons, Ashade, a Muslim cab driver who was caught up in the national fear of people just like him. His gentleness, erudition, kindness and industry was of no meaning when the Government had decided that his kind was a pressing danger to the country.Phoebe exposes herself to Ashade in a way that is true to what we are to learn she has become. Only by the genuineness of the developing relationship are we transported inside the soul of Ashade, brilliantly played by Abdel Kechiche. As he learns that this kind powerful woman that befriended him is something quite different, his impotent rage struck a personal chord of truth never before realized in a cinematic production.The key to the film was Phoebe's describing how only in the chaos, the fear that followed the destruction of the nearby World Trade Center was she important, only then did her friend who had it all reach out to her. In chaos there is community for those who have never found one.A magnificent work of art will always transcend any attempt to describe it, any review falls short for the very reason that success is making a medium do that which can never be achieved outside of the arts being applied. It transcends mere description.And so this film, by use of a script, cameras, directors and actors, creates something so much more. These people, these characters, are now part of my life, and have given me understanding that otherwise would have been absent.

This independent movie of an completely (to me at least) unknown director was surprisingly good, reminding me the sophisticated plots and turns in the way we perceive the characters of the early movies of David Mamet. I recommend that you watch it as a a psychological drama, and not as some general commentary about terrorism. The movie starts like an immigrant to American relations drama, with a_ little_too_good_to_be_true Muslim cab driver Abdel Kechiche taking for a night ride alcoholic and frustrated TV producer Robin Wright Penn. We soon find ourselves in the typical immigrant drama, with an actual component, as the brother of the cab driver is a prisoner in Guantanamo, soon to be shipped to Syria where he would be tortured or worse. An soon after we start finding out that all this is a set up for a very different type of drama, a psychological one, where the culprit lies somewhere else, and the impact of terrorism in the day to day life comes from an unexpected place.There are some details in the movie that make the story non-credible, and some of the political touches are too exaggerated. And yet, the quality of Robin Wright Penn's acting, and the delicate balance of the relation in film changing from empathy to stupor and hate and emotion towards the final and brutal twist leaves a very special feeling. Not all corners may be perfect in the story of the film, but there is a level of truth and anxiety about our lives that makes it step ahead of the crowd.

Interesting title, it turns out that "Sorry, Haters" is the title of a TV program that Robin Wright Penn's character Phoebe is associated with producing. The fictional program has wealthy flaunting the products of their wealth.As the movie begins we see her needing a cab ride, and she happens upon Abdel Kechiche as Ashade, a Muslim in NYC. Innocently enough Phoebe has him take her to New Jersey where we see her watching a family from afar, then going up to the new Lexus in the driveway and putting large scratches in it. Then, getting back in the cab and going home.It doesn't stop there, she ends up insinuating herself into his life, going to where he lives, and where he visits the French Canadian wife of his brother who was arrested and deported for the wrong reasons. Phoebe gains Ashade's confidence when she tells him she has connections that will help get his brother free.The movie is one of those where you can't take your eyes away, because you simply never know what is coming next, and most developments are not what you would expect. It helped overall to view the 14 minute DVD extra with Tim Robbins and several others discussing the movie and what they thought it meant.SPOILERS. Another character was Sandra Oh, as the big boss where Phoebe works. In fact, Phoebe misrepresented herself, told Ashade a series of lies, on a rooftop pretended to call a lawyer to get the brother freed. Phoebe has problems, and the one time she felt really useful was on 9:11 when her boss was frightened and asked for comfort. Her whole life now has become to try to recreate that feeling, all the while not caring about anyone else. In the last scene, she and Ashade are going somewhere, they pause at the top of subway stairs, puts something in his pocket saying "my parents gave me this, I want you to have it." Then she pushes him down the stairs, a few seconds later an explosion as she walks away. In a final act of terrorism she tosses her dog into an oncoming truck and walks away. She no longer needed the one thing that was comforting her.

He's a chemist from an ethnicity and a religion that we've come to associate intimately with terrorism, working as a cabbie in New York City, trying to appeal his brother's freedom from Guantanamo. She's a businesswoman making a large transaction from an ATM machine who flags him down, has him drive her "uptown" which turns out to be Englewood Cliffs. The moment she steps into his unit, she's become a part of his life. Of course, for the near 100 percent part of drivers, passengers are just sitting there, being driven to their destinations, occasionally talking about the little things.But Phoebe isn't your ordinary woman.She's a bomb waiting to explode. She's self hatred taken to extreme lengths, feeding itself on destruction and a particular day in American history -- September 11, 2001 -- looking for a special person whom to focus her poison onto. Now she's found her patsy as a Syrian man named Ashade, and is enacting what she feels is revenge on another woman (Sandra Oh) whom she blames for her misfortunes. Once in Englewood Cliffs, she proceeds to vandalize her ex-husband's vehicle by leaving scratch marks on its surface, and it only gets worse. She now proceeds to ruin this man's life.It's hard to talk about this kind of movie because of the way it develops at a little past the halfway mark and drops hints of what is to come in ways that are clear, but not on an initial view. Phoebe insinuates herself as a successful businesswoman into Ashade's life and promises help to him, his brother and his sister-in-law (Elodie Bouchez) who is an illegal alien and whom Ashade has an unspoken attachment to. Her almost masculine forthrightness at the beginning of the movie (and up to about halfway through) is only the surface of a much deeper psychosis at work. In effect, it's what makes the dynamic relationship between she and Ashade work and develop later on into the horror that ensues. Because Phoebe, that bomb awaiting the moment of detonation, wants to -- in her own words -- cause some damage.Ashade, on the contrary, does not want to do damage and is horrified at her plan. He's just a guy trying to do the right thing, but the story has his ethnicity and the time-line of the events of this story a part of what he gets subjected to. Where Phoebe is a damaged person -- a motif that echoes throughout the movie as she cuts other people's property, her own body, and through a box containing something sinister and gets sealed in her last words to Ashade, "I want to give you something my parents gave me" -- Ashade is trusting, open, and thus vulnerable to this elaborate set up that will divide viewers and make them either "hate" this movie or accept it as a challenging event that is as far left from Hollywood as anything made today about Middle Easterns and the post 9-11 situation.Is this a political film? Not completely, even though 9-11 is never mentioned. What about the faces of billionaires Phoebe is pasting onto a collage that also depicts the terror of that day? I believe it's her own view of successful people, people like Oprah or Martha Stewart or Donald Trump or Bill Gates who seem to have it all, and all that she can attest to is a modest apartment and a dog. Watch for the mystifying conclusion to this collage, and draw your own conclusions.If only for the performances, SORRY HATERS is an excellent feature. Robin Wright Penn is one of the scariest sociopaths this way from Alex Forrest in FATAL ATTRACTION, and her switch from masculine to subservient at a crucial plot point (down to the clothes she wears later on) is chilling, as is her reactions in a dinner scene. Abdellatif Kechiche as Ashade is the victim, a man driven to desperation and extreme measures due to the casual yet sadistic manner that this woman has destroyed all that he has in life. They, along with Sandra Oh, make this movie worth watching if with a huge caveat.