The Reluctant Fundamentalist

 The Reluctant Fundamentalist

            Professor, as I had told you in my email, I was not able to acquire the book because of an error that I made. I intend on picking the book up as soon as possible and adding to this post once I read it. However I will continue the trend and say that I very much enjoyed this movie as well. At long last, a movie that was in English! That was a nice treat after reading subtitles for a few weeks. This movie had a nice pace, with some pretty good action  and suspense sprinkled into it as well. I think that the characters of Bobby Lincoln and Changez were terrific. Bobby was posed as a journalist, but actually was an undercover CIA agent. Changez was a Pakistani kid with the run of the mill American dream. He wanted to go to America and succeed. You could tell right from the beginning that he was hungry for success and that he would succeed. The interesting thing was that Changez knew that Bobby was uncover the whole time but continued to talk to him, because he needed his help to clear his name. Bobby could not keep up his façade any longer after Changez admitted that he was a little happy after 9-11 took place.

            In the end, even though Bobby wants to help Changez, he feels like Changez betrays him when he finds out that Ranier was killed. He believes that Changez screwed him over as it were.

            I think a moral of this story is that sometimes you just need to trust people, no matter how difficult it may be. If Bobby or Changez trusted each other a little more, they could have worked more efficiently.

            I did have a small problem. The film did seem to portray some police officers and FBI agents, and even Bobby Lincoln, as antagonists because of their profiling of Changez. Sure, the one instance where Changez was picked up and arrested in the street was over the line but can you imagine how on edge people were following the 911 attacks? I do not think it is fair to demonize people that were just concerned with the well being of the country after one of the biggest tragedy in the history of the country.

Anthony Mahalis