Golden Globe nominations went to Tahar Rahim and Jodie Foster for their excellent performances in the true-story Gitmo drama THE MAURITANIAN, in which Rahim plays a man detained for years at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba after being accused of being an Al Qaeda recruiter, and Foster plays the hard-nosed lawyer who insists that the Bush administration follow the rule of law, by charging either charging her client with a crime and giving him a trial or releasing him. Directed by Kevin Macdonald, best known for his film THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, another fact-inspired film led by a remarkable performance, and is based on “Guantanamo Diary,” the bestselling memoir of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the Mauritanian who was accused of recruiting for Al Qaeda and helping organize the 9/11 attack.
Tahar Rahim is the French-Algerian actor whose remarkable performance so riveted audiences in the international hit French crime thriller A PROPHET (“Un Prophete”). Rahim brings that same mix of crackling screen presence and charm to this role. Rahim gives a riveting performance that is perhaps better than the film itself, which sometimes strays into a stiff tone of self-aware significance, making it a less-sterling vehicle for Rahim’s sterling performance as the oddly charming, irrepressibly optimistic Mauritanian..
It is this surprising side of the real person – his likability and surprising positivity – in this fact-based story that drew producer Benedict Cumberbatch to the project. Cumberbatch also plays a role in the film, as the determined but morally-straight military prosecutor who is facing off against Jodie Foster’s courtroom argument for the defense. The real present-day Slahi is seen in a coda at the film’s end, singing along to a Bob Dylan song, in a not-to-be-missed extra.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Tahar Rahim) is arrested at a festive community celebration by authorities in his native North African country of Mauritanian, and then turned over to the U.S. government who believe he is a major recruiter for Al Qaeda. After being held in Gitmo for years without charge or trial, defense attorney Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) and her assistant, a young lawyer named Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley), offer to represent him, as a way to legally challenge the Bush administration’s violation of the rule-of-law against indefinite imprisonment without charges. Opposing them in court will be a gifted military prosecutor, Lt. Colonel Stuart Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch), who lost a friend aboard on the planes hijacked in 9/11. As both sides research the case, they uncover shocking facts and a cover-up about what is happening to prisoners at Gitmo.
The legal question that Jodie Foster’s lawyer Nancy Hollander is arguing in not Slahi’s guilt or innocence, but only his right to be charged and have a trial, something the Bush administration was reluctant to do as they tried to straddle the line of rules for prisoners or war and criminal cases, trying to carve out some third way for detainees. To the film’s credit, it never paints Slahi as entirely innocence of all involvement with Al Qaeda, although perhaps more through a family member, and seems unlikely to be the major Al Qaeda recruiter or 9/11 mastermind his interrogators want to believe he is. Also to the film’s credit, the filmmakers brought in the real people involved in this case as consultants and fact-checkers.
Foster’s Nancy Holland is a tough as nails, flinty character who loves the law and in completely uninterested in her client’s guilt. By contrast, Woodley’s Teri, her young assistant, is all emotion, and even blurts out her belief in Slahi’s innocence at their first meeting. Despite her focus only on the legal issue at hand, Hollander also grows to like the charming, quirky Slahi, who poetic view of life is hard to resist. Their legal opponent, Lt. Colonel Stuart Couch, is a brilliant attorney with a personal link to 9/11 but a deep faith and equally deep commitment to justice. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Couch with a passable Southern accent and brings out a dogged determination to uncover all the facts before bringing the case to the courtroom.
THE MAURITANIAN certainly has a worth premise, and seems to promise good courtroom drama too. Unfortunately, it takes a long time to get to that dramatic moment, which comes late in the film. That delay, and that the various groups are often seen in separate scenes, following their own trajectories: the lawyers researching the facts against a secretive administration the resists them both, and the prisoner enduring isolation, interrogation and then torture. The three separate story tracks makes it difficult for the drama to really catch fire, and the addition of a number of flashbacks also works against the drama really taking off. The film is at its best when it focuses on Rahim’s Slahi, coping with his isolation in heartbreaking scenes that recall prison dramas like PAPILLON, or scenes with the sharp-tongued, sharp-brained attorney Hollander, at work, or scenes with both Foster and Rahim together, of which there are too few. The scenes with Cumberbatch are also good, but we wish for more with him and Foster facing off.
THE MAURITANIAN is a good film, a sincere film with a worthy subject, and one that features a powerful central performance by Tahar Rahim but one that never fully catches fire dramatically. Still it is worth a look, for what it does have, particularly Tahar Rahim and Jodie Foster.
THE MAURITANIAN opens Friday, Feb. 12, at several area theaters and will be available on-demand in March
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
