Infidel

The haters will tell you that Infidel is a poorly made, heavy handed Christian movie. It's not. It's an international action thriller movie. American man travels to foreign country and is abducted and tortured for his beliefs. His wife works for the State Department and her bosses decline to help. She steps up and tries to rescue her husband.

Infidel contains the action and suspense fans of the genre want.

Yes, Doug, the main character, is a Christian, and he is abducted and tortured by Iranians. Yes, that does happen in real life. In fact persecution of Christians goes on everyday in Muslim countries. The haters are getting their shorts in a wad, not over real life human suffering, but over the depiction of that suffering on screen.

There is no heavy handed Christian proselytizing in this movie. It's not a Bond film, but it's satisfying as a representative of the genre.

Jim Caviezel is, as ever handsome and charismatic. Claudia Karvan, as his wife is charming and lovable, as she should be. Hal Ozsan is very good as the torturer.

Jim Caviezel is in the lead role as the outspoken American Christian journalist that is invited to Iran for an exchange of ideas. When he speaks his mind this upsets the authorities and he is captured, tortured, and imprisoned. They try to force him to denounce his views to save his life but he refuses, holding fast to his beliefs.

The beginning says "inspired by true events" but the closing has the usual disclaimer "fictitious and any resemblance to real people is unintentional and coincidental." So I have no idea how realistic it was.

It is a good movie to point up some of the difficulties traveling to and interacting with some Middle Eastern countries, but it is not one I would want to view again.

My wife and I watched it at home on DVD from our public library.

Well acted and directed. Caviezel plays Doug Rawlins who travels to Iran to attend a forum where he unequivocally expresses his commitment to Christianity on Iranian TV which leads to his imprisonment and torture. Gut wrenching torture scenes and exciting action sequences balanced by moving intimate scenes between the Rawlins make this a worthy watch.

The beginning of the film is a bit choppy but the narrative is much smoother when the story transitions to Iran and Lebanon.

I find it bizarre that so many reviewers of this movie have either given it a 10 or <3. The movie deserves none of these (extreme) ratings. It's a solid Middle East thriller that doesn't seem to be too far fetched given what's gone on in that part of the world over the past few decades. However, it's certainly no classic yet, it still kept me interested.

I'm lead to understand the budget was on the low side so for what its worth, I think the quality of cinematography was good as well.

Give it a watch...

Almost 2 hours of utter BS...offensive to the Middle East and to anyone who's lived between Muslims and Christians