“THE MAURITANIAN” HITS THEATERS.
“The Mauritanian,” the powerhouse film from director Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland,” “Touching the Void”), is based on a news item of which many moviegoers may be unaware: the 2002 arrest and 14-year imprisonment at Guantánamo Bay detention camp of Mauritanian citizen Mohamedou Ould Slahi — who was never actually charged with a crime.
Slahi ultimately wrote a bestselling memoir, “Guantánamo Diary,” but — even with those who read the book knowing how it all ends — “The Mauritanian” is often an engrossing and grueling experience that raises age-old but still pointed questions about what rights a society is willing to jettison in return for presumed safety and security. That it also features two strong performances at its core — French-Algerian actor Tahar Rahim (so good in the French movie “A Prophet” in 2009) as Slahi and Jodie Foster as his pro-bono ACLU attorney, Nancy Hollander — is a bonus.
As the film starts in 2002, Slahi is at a wedding of a family member in the northwestern African country of Mauritania. He is soon visited by several uninvited guests: Mauritanian government agents who want to take him away for questioning.
The Americans, they tell him, are on the hunt for anyone and everyone who might have had anything to do with 9/11. And Slahi has far less than six degrees of separation from many of those involved.
Macdonald, working from a script by Michael Bronner, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, does a good job of, at first, making Slahi something of an enigma. While Slahi loudly proclaims his innocence, why does he have all these ties that seem to justify the Americans calling him a mastermind? After all, not everyone has a cousin and former brotherin-law who has access to Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone. That’s one number you definitely don’t want in your list of recent calls.
Even Hollander’s assistant, Teri Duncan (Shailine Woodley), questions why they should defend a man who may be one of those responsible for the deaths of thousands. Hollander argues that the concept of habeas corpus — in which a prisoner has the right to be brought before a judge and charged — needs to be defended, whatever the details of Slahi’s alleged crimes.
It makes for a compelling legal battle as Hollander goes up against Lt. Col. Stu Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch), the military attorney who headed the government’s case against Slahi and who knew one of those who died on 9/11. While the legal proceedings grind along in the outside world, Slahi is fighting to maintain his sanity behind prison walls, despite torture often being administered with a gleeful brutality.
Rahim fleshes out Slahi as a real person; he’s not just a victim or someone to be saved. Though Rahim has been in English-language projects previously — Damien Chazelle’s Netflix miniseries “The Eddy,” Kevin Mcdonald’s misbegotten Channing Tatum sword-and-sandal flop, “The Eagle” — American audiences should really sit up and take notice of his performance here.
Slahi’s ordeal has gotten buried under the blizzard of headlines in the years since he first made the news, and many may not remember it. “The Mauritanian” makes sure it’s not forgotten.