This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 7:17 am and is filed under Drama, Movie Reviews, NEW ON VIDEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Director: Thomas McCarthy
Starring: Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Jekesai Gurira, Hiam Abbass
Hollywood likes to make films that I call issue pieces from time to time. An issue piece has a story and characters and they can be quite a good film, but there is always a central social issue that the filmmakers seem to want to sway your opinion on. The Visitor is an issue piece, with the issue here being the plight of illegal aliens in the United States. The story is grim and slow-paced, but the message is clear and poignant without being overpowering. The performances are very good and both relative newcomers Haaz Sleiman and Danai Jekesai Gurira, show both ability and charisma
Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is a widower and university professor who is living life through the motions, finding some relief in music, though he is frustrated in his attempts to learn an instrument himself. When an unavoidable NYC conference leads him to return to his long-kept but rarely used apartment, he finds a young couple, Tarek and Zainab (Sleiman and Gurira) are living there. Things are tense at first but soon Vail’s loneliness and a mutual interest in music gives rise to a friendship between Vail and Tarek, which leads to complications.
The Visitor is a semi-satisfying, but unremarkable drama, designed to tug at our heartstrings, but is not wholly successful. Still, with a decent story and a fresh cast of talented and mostly unknown faces, it does mange to draw out a couple hours worth of entertainment.
