Think slowly

What stands out in Pawn Sacrifice is the intensity and the idiosyncracy of Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire), as he takes on the formidable Boris Spassky (Liev Schrieber). Did not think that watching chess in a movie could be such an exciting endeavor. The hard work of one Fischer leads to American brownie points at the height of the Cold War

14.5/20

An American Nightmare

Fresh-off-boat from Pakistan, Changez (Riz Ahmed) finds a quality education, the girl of his dreams (Erica (Kate Hudson)) and a career of his dreams on Wall Street, in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It is post 9/11 that the dissonances between what he has left behind and what he has become tear apart Changez’ life. A humiliating strip-search at the airport. A buyout mandate that displaces – renders redundant – a Turkish publisher who is the keeper of the works of many poets, including Changez’ father. A girlfriend who turns around and makes a public exhibition of private vignettes of the relationship with Changez. Perhaps it is time to return to the country of birth and try and improve matters. But, is it also time to give in to the dark clouds of radicalism that hover around Changez. The question lingers in the air, even as the movie trails off with the inevitable real conflicts between the two worlds that Changez traverses

12.5/20

Salt It.

Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie)’s talent for the action heroine is obvious, her choice of plot is two decades too late. Evelyn Salt is at the very least a double agent, but is she a triple agent? It is distressing that every aspect of the plot seems to have been drawn from some currently irrelevant Cold War cliché, and, in spite of the same, some of the sequences are barely believable. Cut to the story. An interrogation of a Russian defector reveals that the CIA interrogator – Evelyn – is possibly a double agent (why he gives this information voluntarily to the CIA at large is but one of the faux pas of the movie). In any case, Evelyn performs her dubious role admirably in battling the forces of law and order while fulfilling her near-impossible assassination missions through various decent to good action sequences, and suffice to say that many realities are stretched. When you have finished yawning through the Defcon II and suicide bomber and Universal Soldier-like sequences, the movie trails off rather ambitiously in the quest for a sequel. All the best on that one, Evelyn

10/20