The Reluctant Fundamentalist Reviews
Financial Times
[It] proves what we all knew or suspected. Good art isn't about ideological bookkeeping.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Guardian [UK]
An intriguing film about the blowback involved when melting-pot America goes to war.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Oregonian
"The Reluctant Fundamentalist" serves as a welcome rejoinder to some of the more jingoistic rhetoric of the last dozen years.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Top CriticIt most disappoints as a thriller, the flashbacks and voiceovers and romantic entanglements so dominating the proceedings you forget that someone is bound and gagged in real time.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Little White Lies
Boosted by a terrific lead turn from Riz Ahmed.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Film4
A provocative political thriller which, despite Riz Ahmed's electrifying central performance, is too uneven and over-stated to realise its dramatic and polemical ambitions.
ViewLondon
Engaging, beautifully shot drama with a commendably balanced script and a terrific central performance from Riz Ahmed ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
There's much to enjoy in 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist': fine photography, juicy supporting turns from Kiefer Sutherland and Om Puri, and a powerfully sustained sense of a man adrift in a world going mad.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
SSG Syndicate
Seriously rich in suspenseful, subversive complexities about the roots of extremism - that should appeal to international audiences.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7/10
Empire Magazine
Ahmed excels and the set-up is compelling but ultimately this is middle rank stuff from the Monsoon Wedding director.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
TheMovieReport.com
The film not only functions well as a thriller and an exploration of post-9/11 paranoia and prejudice, but a thoughtful look at fickle, knee-jerk human psychology of judgment in the wake of tragedies.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
One Guy's Opinion
An earnest, serious film, but ultimately one that fails to satisfactorily dramatize the subject--or to transcend a bare, frustrating didacticism.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
NewsBlaze
A film unfortunately characterized by as much cake-and-eat-it ambivalence as those commitment challenged lovebirds. And with an ideological resolution wavering between two extremes, and in the end neither of them.
Examiner.com
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a pretty ballsy political thriller that puts a much needed different spin on the war on terrorism in film and happily piggybacks on the shoulders of Riz Ahmed who carries the film with ease.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6/10
This sure-handed adaptation of Mohsin Hamid's international best seller shows Nair at her best.
East Bay Express
Nair and her writers are trying to tell an honest story about a thoughtful man being violently pulled in different directions.
Deliberately ambiguous, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" provides just enough answers while leaving us with more than enough questions.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Big Hollywood
Come for the barrage of clunky plot devices but stay for the morally repugnant comparison between religious radical killers and capitalists.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Despite the charismatic efforts of the British actor Ahmed, The Reluctant Fundamentalist gets bogged down in proselytizing and plot.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Takes [the book's] riveting tale and flattens it, blunting much of the nuance that made it a great read.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
