The Iran Job (2012)
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Reviews Counted: 14
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 948
My Rating
Movie Info
The Iran Job follows American basketball player Kevin Sheppard as he accepts a job to play in one of the world's most feared countries: Iran. With tensions running high between Iran and the West, Kevin tries to separate sports from politics only to find that politics is impossible to escape in Iran. Along the way he forms an unlikely alliance with three outspoken Iranian women. Thanks to these women, his apartment turns into an oasis of free speech, where they discuss everything from politics to
Sep 28, 2012 Limited
Paladin Films
- Official Site
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All Critics (14) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (12) | Rotten (2)
The film takes a distinctly American approach to Iranian matters of gender relations and religious extremism, shedding little light on subjects that are far more complicated than Schauder makes them out to be.
Top CriticI confess to being a sucker for sports movies, the ones with the "Big Game" at the end. "The Iran Job" has all the requisite elements of that cinematic subgenre, but strives for something deeper.
This observant documentary avoids pedagogy; it's not always artful, but it has a relaxed, light touch that never topples into pretension.
This is a complicated, accessible and heartfelt human drama, one that Obama, Romney and Americans of all political stripes should see ...
The doc's technique of cutting between warm exchanges and the bellicose rhetoric of then-presidents Ahmadinejad and Bush wears thin with overuse, but the big-hearted Sheppard makes for an amiable tour guide.
"The Iran Job" is one of those documentaries that is sad and hopeful in equal measure and exceptional in its storytelling.
The Iran Job locates an absorbing, cross-cultural universality with surprising ease.
As an entry into the Iranian world, Schauder and Nodjoumi made a wise choice with sports, but they made an even better choice with Sheppard.
This lively documentary breaks no new ground cinematically, yet its mix of discovery and befuddlement should bring more than sports fans to a basketball story.
"The Iran Job" has interesting characters, an insight into Iran's culture and the story of one lonely American who, for a year, was his country's cultural ambassador to Iran.
...an amusing cultural fish out of water look at how a big, likable, outgoing Black American basketball player fits into life in Shiraz in southwestern Iran. Then it becomes something more around the halfway mark...
Though there's something refreshing, and disturbingly familiar, about Kevin Sheppard's spontaneity, he's certainly not the most interesting thing about the film.
The sports drama gives The Iran Job a strong hook, while the cultural context enriches the movie's real story, which is less about Sheppard's life in Iran than about the people he meets.
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Foreign Titles
- Der Iran Job (DE)
