The War Within - Palm Beach Post movie review

Meet the terrorist next-door in 'The War Within'

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

Like Paradise Now before it, The War Within attempts the difficult task of trying to dramatize and understand what turns someone into a suicide bomber. Although that "why" remains elusive — beyond the too-simple explanation of imprisonment and abusive interrogation turning a Pakistani engineering student into a terrorist — this fiction film is a gripping, all-too-plausible depiction of how vulnerable we remain to an attack.

Magnolia Pictures

'The War Within'

The verdict: A portrait of a manufactured terrorist; works better as a realistic thriller than a clinical case study.

Director: Joseph Castelo
Starring: Ayad Stehle-Akhtar, Samrat Chakrabarti, Aasif Mandvi, Kamal Marayati, Mike McGlone
Run time: 119 minutes
Release date: Sept. 30, 2005
Rating: Not rated; includes violence, mature themes.

The War Within begins abruptly, as Hassan (Ayad Akhtar, who co-wrote the screenplay) is abducted from the streets of Paris, transported to Karachi where three years of confinement and torture ready him for his New York assignment to blow up Grand Central Station. While waiting, he moves in with a former friend Sayeed (Firdous Bamji) and his family, casually talking politics at social outings and growing close to Sayeed's attractive sister, Duri.

Akhtar puts a gentle, soft-spoken face on terrorism with a performance that is most chilling for its lack of histrionics. Director Joseph Castelo sets a matter-of-fact tone that lends The War Within a quasi-documentary feel. Still, he and his director of photography Liza Rinzler are a little too enamored of shooting in low light levels, which only serves to plunge the narrative into the dark.

Considering the obviously low budget, Castelo manages to make good use of his locations, particularly downtown New York City. The War Within may not get inside Hassan's head sufficiently, but it still works as a cautionary tale about our precarious, contemporary world.