bob_meg Jeff Stanzler's second feature-length film is a lacerating gem of such unhinged chaotic force that it's hard to believe it got made in the first place. It's one of those movies that, especially if you know nothing going into it, consistently shocks and amazes you. It has a plot that makes a sick sort of cosmic sense but that couldn't possibly come from the mind of anyone but an independent film geek --- it's anti-derivative, if anything, and all the better for it.Robin Wright Penn gives what is probably the spookiest, most immediate portrait of a woman unhinged since Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction. No...strike that. At least Alex seemed to have moments of genuine emotional regret. Penn's character is a hate-o-tronic machine, seething with disgust for the MTV-like cable station she slaves away at during the day, biding her time until she can trash luxury status symbols on off-hours, many of which belong to her former best friend, (Sandra Oh in another of her effortlessly breezy portrayals) whom she blames for wrecking her life.But Penn's character isn't just some random sociopath, she's a woman with a plan, and at the center of that plan is an innocent Muslim cab driver. After shanghai'ing him for a late evening-early morning cab ride out to Jersey from NYC, she lures him in with promises of legal help for his unjustly detained brother. It is gradually revealed that her motives are far more sinister and twisted, however, than just procuring an admirer for her over-active imagination.What's really incendiary about this film is the writing and Penn's performance. The script lets us know in a million little twists and slips-of-the-tongue just how bonko Penn's character is. She's like a human grenade on screen...her psychosis is ingrained so deep we never know just when the pin will fall out. It's a riveting performance.Much has been made of the finale, which, while shocking, is just about perfect in its style and execution. It's a great finish for a film that eloquently turns the tables on the myth that all hate, in America, comes from the outside. "Why? Why?" the cabbie beseeches Penn, after she has done much more damage than good for his brother's case. This is a question we often seem to be asking the terrorists...and the answer is no more comforting here than in real life. Sometimes hate isn't a grandiose statement...many times it's just cheap and ugly.

Claudio Carvalho In New York, the Muslin taxi driver Ashade (Abdellatif Kechiche) drives a woman (Robin Wright Penn) to New Jersey and back and witness she scratching a car with a stone. She tells that her name is Philly and she is the powerful producer of the show "Sorry, Haters", and the owner of the car is the woman that "stole" her husband and daughter. Philly snoops in Ashade's life and he tells that he has doctorate in chemistry in Syria but is supporting his sister-in-law Eloise (Élodie Bouchez) and his nephew working as taxi driver since his brother, who is also a Canadian citizen, was arrested in JFK while in transit and deported back to Syria. Philly promises to help the family using a lawyer that is a friend of her. However, sooner his and Eloise's lives and hope are affected by the actions of Philly, whose name is indeed Phoebe."Sorry, Haters" is an impressive and disturbing movie about the prejudice and lack of respect with immigrants (and tourists) in the United States of America after the tragic September 11th by a minority of the American citizens and authorities. The treatment spent to Ashade by the security guard and the policewoman in the very beginning discloses the prejudice and indifference to the Muslin taxi driver. Robin Wright Penn has a top-notch performance in the role of an insane masochistic schizophrenic sociopath lonely woman and her complex character deserves to be studied by psychologists. The destructive behavior of the authorities based on an anonymous denounce, treating the innocent Eloise without the minimum respect, is very sad. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Esperança e Preconceito" ("Hope and Prejudice")

dromasca This independent movie of an completely (to me at least) unknown director was surprisingly good, reminding me the sophisticated plots and turns in the way we perceive the characters of the early movies of David Mamet. I recommend that you watch it as a a psychological drama, and not as some general commentary about terrorism. The movie starts like an immigrant to American relations drama, with a_ little_too_good_to_be_true Muslim cab driver Abdel Kechiche taking for a night ride alcoholic and frustrated TV producer Robin Wright Penn. We soon find ourselves in the typical immigrant drama, with an actual component, as the brother of the cab driver is a prisoner in Guantanamo, soon to be shipped to Syria where he would be tortured or worse. An soon after we start finding out that all this is a set up for a very different type of drama, a psychological one, where the culprit lies somewhere else, and the impact of terrorism in the day to day life comes from an unexpected place.There are some details in the movie that make the story non-credible, and some of the political touches are too exaggerated. And yet, the quality of Robin Wright Penn's acting, and the delicate balance of the relation in film changing from empathy to stupor and hate and emotion towards the final and brutal twist leaves a very special feeling. Not all corners may be perfect in the story of the film, but there is a level of truth and anxiety about our lives that makes it step ahead of the crowd.

thefan-2 The idea of this film is that you can push any man so hard that he will eventually snap and turn violent -- and if he doesn't turn violent, you can just commit the violence yourself and frame him for it. It is an illustration and an allegory of the relationship that's existed between Muslim Arabs and the rest of the world for many decades. When they complain about the humiliations inflicted on them by the West, this is precisely what they mean. The whole faux-benevolent "trust me" attitude on the part of the most sinister exploiters, the foisting of Western values on them by people spouting nauseating "PC" platitudes, the spectacle of Europeans and Americans loudly proclaiming themselves victims even as they occupy, by deception and terror, Arab land, the daily metastasizing spread of Western popular culture -- all of this is mirrored in this film.And what motivates the exploiters? Not illusions of benevolence, not even money. It is a lust for power that is itself a form of insanity. The reasons are so twisted you simply would not believe them.The film conveys all of this rather amateurishly. The plot is ridiculously fumbled. Robin Wright's performance is nothing but a lot of scenery-chewing. (A couple of her more over-the-top scenes actually provoke giggles.) But the idea is a good one, even if it hasn't yet found a cast and crew worthy of it.