The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam Reviews

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

The movie's intentions are like the starry constellations that inspire the eponymous hero: out of reach.

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Ambitious, heartfelt and grand in both its ideas and its pride of place (the Middle East), the film suffers from its virtues.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

The movie gets historical with the warring factions in Persia, Hassan's attempt to assassinate the Sultan, and other Lawrence of Arabia style stuff in the desert.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

[A] plodding and pretentious historical drama.

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More education than entertainment, Mashayekh's first feature length film tells a valid story but fails to produce on the promise of court intrigues and swordplay.

| Original Score: 5/10

The story behind the making of The Keeper is more inspiring than the film itself.

| Original Score: 2/5

The writing, acting and direction are so amateurish that the only thing you'll care about is escaping the theater.

| Original Score: 1/4

Would that good intentions counted for everything.

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The Keeper suffers from a surfeit of scattershot acting and clunky narrative devices that usher the viewer back and forth through time with all the subtlety of a culture clash.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

A reverentially pokey drama that plays less like a conventional movie than a lengthy series of hagiographic historical tableaux.

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While sumptuously beautiful, the film is often stilted and undermined by some painfully amateurish performances that no good intentions can smooth over.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

The result is an admirable attempt that fails under the weight of its own ambition.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

In story structure, performances, pacing, and dialogue, the film's the work of a first-timer. In its deep love for an ancestral culture, it shines.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

For those who know of Omar Khayyam, make the trip to the theater to see this one. If you're just curious, wait for the DVD.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10

Comes to us wrapped in hand-woven shawls of struggle and perseverance.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

A lovely-looking, capably made motion picture.

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An overall satisfying experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

An accomplished first film that manages to comment on the current situation in the Middle East while dealing movingly -- and in very human terms -- with the importance of heritage and history in contemporary life.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Rough around the edges, it's still a formidable movie that's stunning visually.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

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