A Common Man

Despite B movie prod. value, its a great effort, engaging and.....Ben Kingsley and Ben Cross. You'd have to dig hard into the 45+/- years of Ben Kingsley's career to find something not worth revisiting.

its refreshing to see suspense, well paced action/editing and performances in a movie that may unfortunately escape mainstream media's radar. too many times, big budget films prey upon the audience's desires for violence, T&A and the obvious, but this one didn't.

The movie has some flaws, we've seen similar themes (its a remake too) in other big releases, and again, the prod. value is flawed, particularly dubbing. My vote of 8 stars is generous, but attention should be drawn to A Common Man.

Maybe you predict the ending, maybe not.

I consider this a nice change of pace. In fact, after viewing the film, I visited IMDb, saw one review (more or less panning A Common Man), so i chose to offer my first review. I hope my opinion is helpful to you.

A terrorist (Ben Kingsley) plants several bombs throughout the city of Colombo, Sri Lanka and threatens to detonate them unless prisoners are released.

Writing a review for this film without revealing the end is a bit hard to do, but I will try. There are many things about this production that can be said...

First of all, this is a remake of an Indian film called "A Wednesday". I have not seen it, but if the reviews are any indication, the original is vastly superior (and probably worth my seeking out).

Second, Kingsley is completely wasted here. He is one of the great actors of our times, and is vastly underrated for some reason. He gets cast in movies that are forgettable, like this one and "The Wackness". Even when he shines (which is almost always), it is hard to appreciate the talent when he is surrounded by rubbish.

Lastly, the people who made this did not seem to grasp English. When Kingsley speaks, it sounds pretty okay. But when others speak, they talk in a nonsense style sometimes, repeat themselves a lot... it just never makes sense. This is the film's biggest weakness -- do not try to make a film in English if you cannot speak the language. I would much rather watch a Sri Lankan film with subtitles if it would sound more natural...

"A.Wednesday(2008), the Hindi Crime and revenge movie was seriously produced with a great original screenplay, good directing supported with first rate actors, the editing was also good, and of course, the sound track dutifully accommodated to the situations changed and twisted with great collaboration. the whole storyline really grabbed you and never let you go to the end. that old guy would never cast any doubtful impression to anyone, because he really looked and behaved like a common citizen in any big city that walked around you but you never paid any attention to him. yet in this pathetic film, they signed up Mr. Ben Kingsley to play that devil's advocate and avenging angel (or should i say, the avenging devil?). of course, Mr. Kingsley is a great actor who did so many great jobs in so many good films, but hiring this iconic actor to play that role was absolutely inappropriate! he got a satanic face with such a vicious features and such a prominent hooked nose, he is the extreme opposite person who we would call him common. anybody sees him would inevitably remember him. his unique satanic face has turned into even worse as he grows older. i don't know why Sri Lanka movie people would have adapted a 2008 Hindi film and reproduced it. by hiring two well known international actors, Ben Kingsley and Ben cross, two English actors would never make it better if the screenplay and other supporting actors were so weak and so bad. unlike "the next three days" adapted and remade from the original french film, 'anything for her', the remake never ruined the original copy but also turned it into another absolutely watchable thriller. but this 'a common man', on the contrary, completely ruin the 2008 original 'a Wednesday'. why they made this movie? did they think nobody would know what they poorly copied and ruined a great film after six years gap? this film should never have gotten a nod from their investors, as always, stupidity never failed to amaze me. my rating of this movie is not 0, but 0 minus 10. an absolute piece of crap.

The reason im rating this movie awful is that i have seen the original movie by which is in Hindi and was released in 2008. This is simply a English version of the movie "A Wednesday" which is one of the best movie's i have seen. The only reason i picked this movie to watch was because of Ben kingsley and i am very much disappointed and never expected such poor performance from him. I recommend everyone to watch "A Wednesday" with subtitile you maybe also find that on youtube.

This movie is awful in its every aspect either its the direction, production, editing, and above all the acting. When people copy something i would expect that to be a better version, improved one. This is just an awful movie and waste of time, i again recommend to watch the original movie "A Wednesday http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1280558/?ref_=fn_al_tt_4 ".

This movie could have been good.

I loved Ben Kingsley in it. He was the only person who acted.

At first I thought the actors were actually trying to look stilted and awkward and were purposely trying to deliver their lines in that horrible manner. It felt like they were literally reading their lines from the script....

I soon learned, no, they were just all bad actors... apart from Ben K that is...

Very disappointing.

The story itself was great though.

This could have been a much better movie.