The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2013)

How sad is this?

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

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

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!

A good depiction and upholding of the opposition to two very extremes: religion and capitalism, which use people for own benefits. The only disappointment is the ignorance of "fundamentals" of Lahore, which was strongly felt through out the film whenever it took us there. The so-called "Lahore University" and the surroundings nowhere matched the reality. The dialogue delivery in Urdu was also sub-standard. I wish they could hire a proper consultant to give them a realistic touch of the place, for which the film was all about. Besides a few technical blunders; the film, crew, acting and music overall is indeed worthy of appreciation.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is one of those films everyone should see. The main character is a Pakistani who goes to an Ivy League University in the United States and then moves on to a corporate life in New York City prior to 9/11. He grew-up wanting to be an American, but he suddenly finds himself being viewed as an enemy after the Twin Towers are struck.The struggle that he undergoes is an analogy for Pakistan. He wants the American dream; however, it won't have him as he is, represented through a seemingly doomed relationship and the alienation he undergoes at work. He is young, and hasn't yet found his truth. His journey to finding it is the underlying drive of the film.The Reluctant Fundamentalist captures the modern world, but there is a couple drawbacks. Kate Hudson is miscast. She is too old for the role, and isn't quite capable of handling the character's strong emotions. Though, it doesn't help that her romance doesn't take the full course that it does in the book. The rest of the cast is outstanding. Riz Ahmed handles the protagonist with dignity and grace, Kiefer Sutherland portrays an Executive roughly without overdoing it, and Liev Schreiber represents the audience's gaze with the proper dichotomy. In Liev's final scene, he expresses the exact same feelings I had when finishing the novel.