REVIEW - THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST

Maybe it's the fact that you know exactly where The Reluctant Fundamentalist is heading right from the start that makes it such a slog to endure. These stereotypes, speaking their platitudes, succumbing to society's preconceptions of whom they each ought to be ever more with each passing moment. Not having read Mohsin Hamid's novel, I'm not sure how closely this film hews to its plot, but Hamid also contributed to the adaptation, and so I will attribute a large amount of The Reluctant Fundamentalist's failures to him. His route from dot to dot is the easy one, the one which submits the kind of moral dilemmas discussed dozens of times before in one artistic medium or another, and resolves them in the most plot-friendly fashion. And, since the action starts towards the chronological end of this plot, our knowledge of the eventual destination doesn't help to generate any suspense - indeed, for a would-be thriller, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is extremely non-suspenseful, and pretty dry on the dramatic front as well. We're supposed to identify with Riz Ahmed's central character, Changez, despite the fact that he loves America for the wrong reasons and hates it for the wrong reasons. There's a debate buried within his role, that not of knowing how each side in the War on Terror believes it is right, but of understanding why. It's not explored in any material detail. Kate Hudson plays his artist girlfriend, which is enough information to inform you of just how irritating this person is, although still not enough to inform you of just how awful her art is. In fact, it's even worse than this film.