The picture couldn't be more topical, but in the end it feels schematic, and you sense that the filmmakers are trying too hard to be even-handed.
Comment
10/14/05
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The War Within (2005)
72
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:57
Fresh:41
Rotten:16
Average Rating:6.6/10
Consensus: The War Within attempts to get into the mind of a terrorist, and the result is believable and unsettling.
Theatrical Release:Sep 30, 2005 Limited
Synopsis: The War Within is the story of Hassan, a Pakistani engineering student in Paris who is apprehended by western intelligence services for suspected terrorist activities. After his interrogation,... [More]
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Reviews for The War Within
Top CriticMadly rational and persuasive political drama.
11/02/05
Top CriticAkhtar, who also co-wrote the screenplay, is unable to convey Hassan's internal conflicts with any force.
07/07/06
Top CriticNervously reduces its characters to symbols and its plot to contrivances.
10/14/05
Its most chilling scenes are the ones that show us how easy it is for an intelligent mind to grab onto a fundamentalist simplicity in order to avoid having to think its way through a complex political and cultural situation.
10/13/05
Whatever inner conflict rages looks to us like moping and staring blankly out at the East River.
09/27/05
Top CriticA thought-provoking and mood altering experience.
10/14/05
The premise is indeed engaging, but the conversations are simplistic.
07/11/06
The storyline in The War Within is far from fluid and, at times, overwrought. But it doesn't stop the film from capturing one's interest.
12/02/05
The details the film provides of how a lonely true believer might try to wreak havoc on thousands of strangers are horrifyingly believable.
10/14/05
Top Criticnever comes close to subscribing to Hassan’s actions nor to excusing his motives, but does lay out in stark detail exactly what drove him to it [making it] essential viewing
10/19/05
The very model of the self-hating liberal consciousness; no matter his better intentions, he finds himself blaming the victim for the crime.
11/03/05
A penetrating, provocative, tautly suspenseful character study.
10/07/05
Top CriticIt's topical, scary, and it makes you stop and think.
10/08/05
A taut and courageous post-9/11 drama...Castelo studiously avoids stereotypes and simple solutions.
10/13/05
A haunting portrait of how the only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the vacuum of an uncertain world is ideological certainty.
10/13/05
Of all the feature films and documentaries to emerge since 9/11, few have been as bold, perceptive or as downright chilling as this thriller from co-writer/director Joseph Castelo.
09/30/05
Along with the obvious practical, political self-interest, there's an undeniable creepy voyeurism that enters our desire to know what goes on in the mind of a suicide bomber.
10/05/05
Top CriticIn a brisk 100 minutes, we get to know the conflicted, but driven Hassan so clearly, intimately and, most of all, humanly, that you have to keep remembering not to root for him to succeed in his quest for death and destruction.
09/30/05
It does a fairly good job of laying out the basic political motives behind Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, as a drama, it has its narrative peak in the middle and quickly runs out of story afterward.
09/12/05
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