Libramedi
Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant
Myron Clemons
A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
Ortiz
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
euphoricorlando-1
I read the reviews and expected to hate this movie. Then I watched it. It was wonderful. I don't have expectations like other Americans. I have traveled overseas and seen some incredible historical places. Not everything that glitters is gold. A movie can be amazing without having the kind of Hollywood drama Americans have come to expect; no car chases and explosions and sexy criminal activity are required. A movie can be touching, weird, loving, surprising, fascinating, and gentle and still be profound. Hanks took this role because he knew the deeper story is genius. If you aren't an old soul, don't watch it. But if you love good storytelling, with a foreign culture and some rich cinematography, give this one a try. It's beautiful.
Fahian Mahmud
To summarize things, I am a huge Tom Hanks fan. I love to see his movies over and over. The Terminal (2004) - I don't know how many times I have seen that movie and even cried. But this particular movie also made me cry, because of the intense level of pain. Totally unexpected from Tom Hanks, that he will go through with such a character and a script. I have tried to watch this movie and for the first several attempts, I failed. The movie has no attraction points. There is almost no scene where you can get amazed and set yourself for the rest of the movie. Everything is so hazy and without any solid purpose.I will still be seeing more of Tom Hank's movies. But I don't expect him to work on such type of characters.
Rick Wingender
The only reason I chose to watch this was because it featured Tom Hanks and I needed to fill an hour and a half while on the treadmill. The plot is boring beyond belief. If this movie has any purpose at all, it is merely to show how stupid westerners can be when traveling to vastly different cultures. It's hard to feel sorry for Americans who get captured while hiking in Iran because they thought it would be cool, or an American dimwit student who steals a poster in North Korea and gets sentenced to 15 years at hard labor. Similarly, it was hard for me to feel sorry for Hanks' character, who must have experienced 20 such moments in this film. Other than these lessons, I don't think the film had any redeeming qualities, and it certainly was not funny at all.
sir_brettley
This movie comes close to hitting it out of the park. Alan Clay is a Willy Loman figure. He outsourced production of Schwinn, an American icon, to China and the company went under when the Chinese undercut Schwinn. Clay bitterly describes the result "all the bikes are the same, just different labels for different companies" and the Chinese of course can sell theirs for a fraction of what Schwinn does.Now he finds himself on a "do or die" mission for his current company. His job is to sell a holographic communications package to the Royal Family in Saudi Arabia.He has to negotiate a number of obstacles, both real and imaginary, to achieve his goal. There is a literal "monkey on his back" that represents his state in life. Once he gets rid of that the life he imagined comes back...or does it? Karma both gives and takes.Tighter editing would have made this a much better picture. Perhaps some voice-over dialogue from Clay to emphasize the Willy Loman in him. Flashbacks to the good ol' days when he was the king (of sales) himself.
