Reluctant whaaaaat?
Directed by Mira Nair.
So before I began writing, I did my usual IMDb check on The Reluctant Fundamentalist and was shocked to see ‘thriller’ as the genre of this film. Maybe the first 8 minutes fit into the thriller category with the bold Qawwali sequence but the rest of the film fails as a thriller and would be better classified as drama in my opinion. Nonetheless, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a heavy yet moving film with dedicated actors and actresses.
When I saw the trailer, I thought to myself that the story will be just like many a films about 9/11- revolving around the life of a muslim man and how his world changes after the attacks. Since I hadn’t read the book either, I walked into the cinema quite certain of what the movie will be about. Lucky for me, there was much more to the story than I expected. Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed), the protagonist, is a Princeton graduate aiming to make it big in Wall Street. Then the Twin Towers are attacked and his world turns upside down. His homeland keeps calling out to him and 10 years later, he’s living in Lahore and talking about his time in the United States with an American journalist. This may seem a bit clichéd but the mysterious kidnapping of an American professor in Lahore that links Changez accounts for some unexpected twists and turns to follow. Yes, this is impressive but the beautifully woven plot was ruined somewhere during its conversion from a novel to an adapted screenplay to finally a motion picture.
I’ve never been a fan of predictable films and I LOVE serious movies, so I should have ideally liked The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I didn’t. I may have liked the story, but I didn’t like how it was cinematized. The plot slowwwwllly unfolded and ended up becoming an unclear mess. People say the book is supposed to be ambiguous- a good ambiguous, but the film adaptation just creates pure confusion. Riz Ahmed however, commendably manages his role amidst the turmoil of the film- especially in the climax.
I’d give it a rating of:
PS: One star is solely because of Riz Ahmed’s performance.
Film Frenzy 