The Reluctant Fundamentalist
IFC Films | Release Date: April 26, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
54
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 28 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
13
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
Time Out LondonTom HuddlestonMay 14, 2013
Riz Ahmed is superb as Changez (pronounced Chan-Gez, not like the Bowie song), Read full review
60
EmpireDamon WiseMay 6, 2013
Ahmed excels and the set-up is compelling but ultimately this is middle rank stuff from the Monsoon Wedding director. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanApr 28, 2013
Though Nair leaves us guessing as to Changez’s motivations, she also uses a pretty heavy hand in laying out the movie’s themes. The changes between the novel and the screenplay are equally unsubtle, especially in regards to the ill-conceived romance. Read full review
60
Film.comStephanie ZacharekApr 24, 2013
Although The Reluctant Fundamentalist raises some complicated questions, in the end, it doesn’t challenge that much. Read full review
60
Time OutKeith UhlichApr 23, 2013
Ticking-time-bomb suspense is not Nair’s forte, so she relies on Michael Andrews’s Middle East–inflected score to do most of the heavy lifting in the present-day scenes, which feel shapeless and perfunctory. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Robert Everett-GreenMay 17, 2013
It’s a timely narrative subject, but its treatment in The Reluctant Fundamentalist is fundamentally flawed. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghMay 9, 2013
Mira Nair has crafted a handsome but clubfooted film that lurches through predictable hot spots. It 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. Read full review
50
SalonAndrew O'HehirApr 26, 2013
This movie feels a little half-baked to me in the sense that it carries an exceedingly complicated intellectual agenda below the surface of a conventional thriller, and doesn’t execute either level as well as it might. Read full review
50
New York PostSara StewartApr 26, 2013
Alas, the film’s relevance — and ultimately sane upshot — is buried beneath a meandering and oftimplausible plot. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineAbhimanyu DasApr 15, 2013
The laziest sort of political cinema, full of straw men and finger-pointing, wrapped up in an awards-friendly bow by its beautiful cinematography and a manipulative world music-y score. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottMay 17, 2013
Lacks any real sense of vitality. And no matter how worthwhile a film's message is, it's difficult for audiences to care if the path to the payoff so often feels like a slog. Read full review
40
VarietyJustin ChangApr 26, 2013
Mira Nair’s latest immigrant saga saddles itself with a laborious narrative structure and half-baked thriller elements in a misguided attempt to open up what should be an intimate, introspective story. Read full review
40
SlateDana StevensApr 26, 2013
For all the contemporary relevance of the issues it explores, there’s something morally and aesthetically muffled about The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Nair is so busy making sure we never lose sympathy for her handsome and charming protagonist that the film ultimately founders in a tangle of humanist platitudes. Read full review
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