It’s just that nothing can beat this intimate view
of the real man, smiling and singing joyfully
to Bob Dylan, no less. One wonders how he
even managed to stay sane, let alone joyful,
after 14 years at Guantanamo without being
formally charged or tried. And in conditions
that included a brutal stretch of torture: severe
cold, sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, a
mock drowning, waterboarding, and threats to
imprison his own mother at Guantanamo.
Luckily, “The Mauritanian,” directed by Kevin
Macdonald, gets one thing very right: Tahar
Rahim’s masterful central performance. The
French actor achieves something his big-name
costars — Jodie Foster, Benedict Cumberbatch
and Shailene Woodley — do not, presenting a
multi-layered, subtly shaded and deeply moving
portrayal that proves hard to forget. Rahim
deserves the awards buzz he’s getting; he also
deserves more big roles, and soon.
Macdonald is known for documentaries (the
Oscar-winning “One Day in September”) as well
as features (“The Last King of Scotland”), and
“The Mauritanian” has a quasi-documentary
feel at times. Partly that’s because there’s a lot
of dry information to get across here, namely
the ins and outs of Slahi’s legal case. The film
tries to achieve this by juxtaposing the stories
of defense lawyer Nancy Hollander (Foster),
who works to gain Slahi’s release based on lack
of evidence, and U.S. military prosecutor Stuart
Couch (Cumberbatch.)
Both Foster, in her brittle, crusty portrayal
of Hollander, and Cumberbatch, sporting a
southern drawl as a devoted military man with
a conscience, are welcome presences in any
movie. But the script here really doesn’t give