The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Film Review

Its message might be flabby, but Mira Nair’s adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s novel is still a bold piece of global storytelling. Based on the 2007 novel by Mohsin Hamid, this is an ambitious, heartfelt tale of divided loyalties in a world where complacent belief in the triumph of globalised capital was shattered by the Twin Towers attack. Ahmed is Changez, a firebrand Muslim professor in Pakistan, suspected by the CIA of anti-American jihadism. But Changez is to reveal that his ideological training camp was a Wall Street corporation: years before, as a bright immigrant to the US, he got an Ivy League scholarship and was fast-tracked into a high-flying Manhattan job, where he learned to be internationally strategic and ruthless. But 9/11 changes him, and as people of his skin colour and background come to be reviled in New York, Changez reconsiders his loyalties and life choices.

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