The Reluctant Fundamentalist

    The Reluctant Fundamentalist
    2013

    Synopsis

    In New York, a Pakistani native finds that his American Dream has collapsed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

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    Cast

    • Riz AhmedChangez
    • Kate HudsonErica
    • Liev SchreiberBobby Lincoln
    • Kiefer SutherlandJim Cross
    • Om PuriAbu
    • Shabana AzmiAmmi
    • Martin DonovanLudlow Cooper
    • Nelsan EllisWainwright
    • Haluk BilginerNazmi Kemal
    • Meesha ShafiBina

    Recommendations

    • 75

      NPR

      Nair likes to have fun even when her material is somber, and for this movie she deploys a rich palette and a multi-culti but mostly kitsch-free score that fuses old and new with a lovely Sufi devotional piece, and is peppered with Pakistani pop.
    • 70

      Village Voice

      At times it's dense and sluggish, too much like a novel. But there is some exhilaration to be had.
    • 70

      Los Angeles Times

      The result inevitably pushes too hard at times and can't help but stray into melodrama, yet the film does an admirable job of transplanting the novel's thoughtful concerns into a fast-moving suspense context.
    • 67

      The A.V. Club

      This might be the best week for The Reluctant Fundamentalist to open or the worst, but the timing doesn’t matter when the powder is damp.
    • 60

      Time Out

      Ticking-time-bomb suspense is not Nair’s forte, so she relies on Michael Andrews’s Middle East–inflected score to do most of the heavy lifting in the present-day scenes, which feel shapeless and perfunctory.
    • 60

      Film.com

      Although The Reluctant Fundamentalist raises some complicated questions, in the end, it doesn’t challenge that much.
    • 50

      Slant Magazine

      The laziest sort of political cinema, full of straw men and finger-pointing, wrapped up in an awards-friendly bow by its beautiful cinematography and a manipulative world music-y score.
    • 33

      The Playlist

      Kiefer Sutherland feels somewhat miscast as the mentor, but nowhere near as badly as Hudson is as the love interest. In all fairness, it’s a nightmare of a part, an artist (whose art is, as it turns out, is terrible) haunted by the recent death of her boyfriend, and seemingly unable to read basic human feelings and emotion. But Hudson doesn’t really help things, coming across more often than not as unintentionally funny.

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    • EvaOkada