Wes's Grade: B-
"Rosewater" is Stewart's compelling but flawed political drama
Most people know comedian Jon Stewart from his satirical, Emmy-award winning TV show "The Daily Show" but his new movie "Rosewater" is far from a laughing matter. Based on a true story of a journalist imprisoned in Iran, it's a compelling, well-acted but slow-moving tale that probably would've been more effective with a more skilled director. In 2009, London-based Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari (Gael García Bernal) was detained in Iran for 118 days because of an interview he gave regarding the country's presidential election. Bahari was arrested and accused of being a spy and spent four months at Evin Prison being brutally interrogated. Bahari was usually blindfolded when being interrogated, and the sole distinguishing feature of his interrogator was that the interrogator smelled of rosewater. Directed and written by Stewart in his feature film debut behind the camera and based on Bahari's best-selling account of the story, "Then They Came for Me," "Rosewater" is a serviceably handled, intriguing political drama peppered with a few stirring moments and a nice performance from Bernal as Bahari, though under someone like Paul Greengrass or Kathryn Bigelow, it would've been much better. It lacks the edge and brutality of "Midnight Express" or the political scope of "Zero Dark Thirty" and the second act in particular doesn't really do much, but overall it's a decent effort, with a couple of memorable supporting turns from Danish actor Kim Bodnia as his interrogator and Oscar-nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo as his long-suffering mother. "Rosewater" shows that Stewart, who's always been comfortable in front of the camera on the small screen, is fairly adept behind the scenes of a big screen effort, though a handful of nice but unnecessary touches show his novice as a feature film director (case in point: the brief exposition doesn't really need to unfold in pictures on the frames of store fronts). "Rosewater" has a certain attachment to its story that will naturally draw you in, even if Stewart's somewhat bland execution doesn't always do so, and on that note it needs more power and emotion. "Rosewater" is a good, entertaining film though it may have limited appeal to Stewart's fan base and/or news junkies who follow this type of thing.
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