Powerful

good film but with many flaws

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

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.

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!

"The reluctant fundamentalist" is an excellent movie which offers everything. It is gripping from very start ... "Riz Ahmad" is an exceptionally good actor. I wonder why people don't know about him. With his charismatic and diverse personality he has given true color to his character/role.Liev Schreiber was equally good in a supporting role. All credit goes to 'Mira Nair' for directing this to perfection. Hats off to her work of art...This movie gives a very strong message in a very interesting way... Its a must watch... it shows the other side of picture ...

Mira Nair is a fine film-maker, with a lavish eye for detail, so evident in the opening scenes of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, but what was she thinking in butchering an intriguing, thought-provoking book by adding a sexed-up terrorist sub-plot that undermines the power and themes of the story.This action movie subplot – about a kidnapped American professor and attempts by the CIA to find him – is Katherine Bigelow at her worst, and Hollywood at its most mediocre. Completely non-existent in the novel, it takes up half the movie, and ends with an implausible shoot-out, and some tedious speechifying beloved of bad American movies.Nair should have stuck to the main story of how the war on terror soured the Pakistani middle class's love affair with America, as seen through the eyes of one man. Critical of America's response to 9/11, which alienated moderate Muslims, the movie is at its best when it explores the protagonist's struggle to succeed at Princeton and on Wall Street, and his subsequent disillusionment in the face of post-9/11 hostility. Riz Ahmed puts in a fine performance, as do most of the actors, with the exception of a miscast Kate Hudson as the somewhat-too-old girlfriend struggling to commit after the death of her high-school sweetheart.The Pakistan scenes (shot in India) are wonderfully evocative, as is the use of Qawwali music on the stunning soundtrack, but a silly action story detracts from the main plot and characterizations, which required much more exploration and depth for this movie to really succeed.