THE WAR WITHIN
Directed by: Joseph Castelo.
Produced by: Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente & Tom Glynn.
Written by: Ayad Akhtar, Joseph Castelo & Tom Glynn.
Director of Photography: Lisa Rinzler.
Edited by: Malcolm Jamieson.
Music by: Free Association.
Released by: Magnolia.
Language: English & Urdu with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: USA. 100 min. Rated: R.
With: Ayad Akhtar, Firdous Bamji, Nandana Sen & Sarita Choudhury.

In The War Within, firmly set in the present, fear has won out over reason. This low-simmering political thriller is the nightmarish realization of the warning in the upcoming Good Night, and Good Luck, a docudrama of the 1950s McCarthy witch hunt, which depicts the suspension of civil liberties by government agencies.

Abruptly abducted from the streets of Paris, an innocent Pakistani man is transported and held captive in an unknown location. After being interrogated for information regarding a suspected terrorist, the man, Hassan (Ayad Akhtar, who is also one of the film's writers), is brutally tortured by an unidentified agent (Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are never far from mind). In his cell, Hassan is comforted by another prisoner, who offers him a Koran. Three years later, Hassan arrives in New York harbor, smuggled among cargo, and calls upon Sayeed (Firdous Bamji), an old family friend, for a place to live. Sayeed is living the American dream; a doctor, he has his own home with a wife and an adolescent son. While Hassan tells his new surrogate family he's looking for work, he actually spends his days in a safe house constructing car bombs.

With a wide-eyed baby-face, the suitably understated Akhtar plays his cards close to the vest, keeping the audience on edge. It's not clear if he is kidding when he says to a co-conspirator, "We could always blow ourselves up like Palestinians." In odd moments, Akhtar ineffectively comes across as a blank - such as when he's shoved against a wall during a heated argument. Hassan's seeming innocence is undercut by his slogan-ridden demagoguery - "ignorance is not innocence." The dialogue, the characterizations and the conflicts are abundantly obvious - Hassan will come between Sayeed and his son, and Sayeed's sister, the flirtatious and westernized Duri (Nandana Sen), will distract him from his mission. But after a sluggish middle, the pace and momentum increase exponentially in the last act as a New York City landmark becomes a terrorist target.

Revenge fuels Hassan's personal jihad. With deep-etched scars on his back, Hassan is undoubtedly an actual victim. But the film sidesteps a more illusive and thornier issue - the psychological sense of victimization among Muslims. During a debate at backyard celebration, Hassan chides Sayeed's Americanized friends for turning their backs on their people, saying "The life you live is born from the blood of others." Sayeed offers a pragmatic defense of the United States, not naively justifying or condemning like Hassan. Only here does the film offer a more nuanced view on its simplistic scenario. Kent Turner
September 30, 2005