Tuesday 22 November 2011

The Visitor

2007 by Thomas McCarthy - English movie from Hollywood

An extremely different movie from Hollywood.

A college professor from Connecticut travels to New York for work and finds that a couple (from Africa) is living in his apartment. He feels sorry for their state, as illegal immigrants, and lets them stay and slowly gets involved in their life. 

The movie begins nicely and proceeds in a simple and nice way. The way the professor gets friendly with Tarek and his girl friend is nice. I especially liked their drumming lesson and their time at the park. And even after Tarek gets arrested it is really good. But once Tarek's mother arrives, I am afraid the movie is a bit different. It takes a path which is often used by typical romantic comedies actually. It does not use it completely, but it is nearly like walking on the edge.

Finally, as the movie ends, it is still a good movie, but I felt somewhere on the way the movie lost its heart. Some more thoughts and efforts would have made this an absolute classic, but it ends up as a lost opportunity.

However, it is heartening to see an American movie thinking from the side of the illegal's whom America do not like at all. The message towards this is quite clear and the movie succeeds in conveying it, but otherwise as a movie, it ends up as one which could have been much much better.

Good performance by Richard Jenkins as the professor. I liked Haaz Sleiman, as Tarek, even better though. What a charming actor. 

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