Infidel

I never saw a trailer for Infidel but when I read that it was based on a true story about a kidnapping in the Middle East I was really intrigued and decided to see it last night.  Doug Rawlins (Jim Caviezel) is a popular Christian blogger who is invited to speak at an interfaith conference in Cairo.  While being interviewed on television, he openly proselytizes which angers many Muslims, including a group from Hezbollah who kidnap him and imprison him in Lebanon.  After Doug secretly contacts his wife Liz (Claudia Karvan), who works for the U.S. State Department, she publicizes his case so he is moved to Iran where is tried on false charges of espionage and sentenced to death.  When the State Department refuses to get involved, Liz travels to Iran on her own in a desperate attempt to rescue her husband.  While there are some really great action sequences, this movie is unnecessarily convoluted because it doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be.  The filmmakers take great pains to establish Rawlins as a man of faith who is kidnapped for his beliefs but this is, ultimately, a red herring for the real reason for his kidnapping (a subplot briefly introduced and abandoned in the first act and then awkwardly brought back in the third) which turns the movie into a political thriller.  Characters and situations are introduced very haphazardly (the editing is an absolute mess) and it sometimes takes a few minutes to get the gist of what is happening and, more importantly, why it is happening.  Liz is first helped by a small sect of Christians practicing in secret in Tehran but then they disappear from the narrative and the rescue becomes a dramatic operation by a group of underground spies who suddenly appear without explanation.  I can appreciate characters who follow their convictions no matter the cost but Doug is inexplicably bland and passive so I was never really invested in him or his fate.  His Muslim captor Ramzi (Hal Ozsan), on the other hard, is incredibly intriguing and, even though his actions are reprehensible, his motivation is compelling.  His wife Liz (who, it is revealed in several flashback scenes, has lost her faith) is also much more sympathetic, in my opinion, because she will do anything to save her husband.  I'm not even sure what the filmmakers are trying to say about Christianity because the message is so muddled but this would have definitely been a much better movie if they had picked a focus. (For the record, I think they should have stayed with the religious persecution narrative).  Finally, this movie also has many technical issues including the aforementioned editing, bad sound design, problematic cinematography (so many mind-boggling Dutch angles), and clunky dialogue.  Give this a miss!

Note:  After watching this movie I wanted to know more about Doug Rawlins.  It turns out that he isn't real at all but a composite of several people who have been held prisoner in Iran.