With author Hamid's help, Nair and her co-screenwriter, William Wheeler, have ironed out some crucial ambiguities in the novel's account of the uneasy relationship between the two men. As a student protest against a repressive Pakistani government gathers steam around the two men, heavily monitored by the CIA, it's Bobby who must listen to Changez's story - all of it, the young Pakistani insists.

Yet it's framed as a teahouse conversation between Changez and Bobby (Liev Schreiber), an American journalist with his own conflicts of loyalty and belief. With the kidnapping of an American professor in the opening scene in Lahore, The Reluctant Fundamentalist positions itself as a thriller. This may not add up to quite what you think, though. In America, Changez is mentored by a hard-charging boss (Kiefer Sutherland) at a high-profile business analytics firm. A beard appears on his Christlike face, and when next we see him he's delivering firebrand speeches against foreign invaders at a Lahore university.

11 comes, bringing in its wake a surge in American patriotism and a jittery hypersensitivity about dark-skinned faces that offers Changez his own private education in arbitrary injustice. His work assessing the profitability of small companies around the world - and ruthlessly downsizing or toppling them if they're not - troubles him not one iota. First comes Princeton, then a ritzy job as a business analyst under the mentorship of a tough boss (Kiefer Sutherland, middle-aged at last), and an arty, pale-skinned girlfriend fetchingly played by Kate Hudson.Ĭhangez, in short, seems to have it made. The movie, based on a well-received novel by Mohsin Hamid, charts the political and spiritual journey of Changez, a driven young Pakistani who arrives in New York determined to succeed, American-style.Īs new immigrants go, Changez - played by charismatic British actor-rapper Riz Ahmed, who has liquid black eyes and a soulful stare that gets right under your skin - is unusually privileged. With: Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Liev SchreiberĬoming as it does amid intense public debate about the alienation of immigrants in America, the release of Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist is both timely and slightly eerie. Rated R for language, some violence and brief sexuality

The reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes