Relevancy and a strong lead performance can't quite save Mira Nair's latest. Elizabeth Kerr reports.

The Reluctant Fundamentalistis one of those films that's in the nearly impossible position of trying to say anything new about a thorny subject. Changing perspective can help, but even then, the search for new voices has given rise to scores of books and films examining the issues of extremism and identity as seen by artists, young women, the freshly radicalized, kindergarten kids, spies on the ground, journalists - from Ireland to Sri Lanka and back. But the idea of Muslim fundamentalism is particularly disturbing for (largely) Western media, which often forgets that radicalism in any form is dangerous.

So the generally romantic and emotional Mira Nair (SalaamBombay!,MississippiMasala) has taken on Mohsin Hamid's bestseller about a rising star, Wall Street type, who finds himself on the wrong side of the divide post-9/11.The Reluctant Fundamentalisthangs its message on a mystery's frame, beginning in Pakistan with the kidnapping of an American academic - who happens to be the colleague of the man who's reconnecting with his lapsed heritage while working as a professor, Changez (Riz Ahmed,The Road to Guantanamo, the excellent BBC zombie mini-seriesDead Set). He's a person of interest in the kidnapping, and as he tells his story to reporter Bobby Lincoln (Liev Schreiber), he recounts the events that put him on the CIA's radar.

After graduating from an Ivy League school, Changez is taken under wing by a powerful banker (Kiefer Sutherland) who likes his style. Changez starts rising through the Wall Street ranks at an amazing clip, giving him the wherewithal to care for his formerly affluent parents. The high-flying world of corporate finance also introduces him to a woman, Erica (Kate Hudson), who could one day be his wife. But after the World Trade Center, none of that means anything, and Changez finds himself the object of suspicion and forced to "pick a side". His personal American dream crumbles.

As is her habit, Nair runs hot and cold with the material, one minute evoking sympathy and rage, the next confusion and disinterest. Ahmed is a good actor in a good role saddled with a difficult script; his job isn't made any easier by the film's facile and somewhat reductive ideas and a fluctuating grip on who Changez is. When he and he alone is pulled aside and subjected to a degrading search at the airport on his way back from a business trip, it's impossible not to empathize with his rage and frustration. But a few minutes later when he takes that rage out on Erica with some truly hateful words, he becomes less so. It's intended to make him multi-faceted like everyone can be, but the script makes him more schizophrenic than anything else.

Sadly the subject matter inFundamentalistplays right into Nair's other bad habit: preaching. Changez's identity crisis drives the story to its ultimate point, that modern capitalism and religious fundamentalism perpetrate, the same kind of violence. By the time we get there the film has become so weighted down with messages (some tired and some undeservedly unexplored) and a goofy twist that it turns into a rote thriller in the last act. Ahmed almost saves the day, but in the end there's too much content and not enough fresh perspectives.

The Reluctant Fundamentalistopened in Hong Kong on Thursday.

Wall Street power broker Jim Cross (Kiefer Sutherland) is so impressed with aspiring analyst Changez (Riz Ahmed) he pronounces his name right. Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist

(HK Edition 09/13/2013 page7)