Un hologramme pour le roi

'A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING': Three Stars (Out of Five)

The new quirky (and very bizarre) comedy-drama flick, from writer/director Tom Tykwer (who also wrote and directed the indie cult classic 'RUN LOLA RUN', and co-wrote and co-directed 'CLOUD ATLAS'). The lead of 'CLOUD ATLAS', Tom Hanks, stars in this movie as well. He plays a down on his luck American businessman, that travels to Saudi Arabia; to try and sell an idea of his to the government there. The movie co-stars Alexander Black, Sarita Choudhury, Sidse Babett Knudsen and Tom Skerritt. It's based on the book, of the same name, by Dave Eggers. I really wanted to like this movie, but it's way too slow- paced and uninvolving.

The story is set in 2010 Saudi Arabia. A failed American businessman, named Alan Clay (Hanks), has traveled there, to try and make a business deal with a rich monarch. He's heartbroken, over a recent divorce with his wife, and thinks about his daughter constantly. Alan develops new relationships, during his business trip, as he desperately struggles to sell his product.

The movie is definitely very quirky and strange, and I love quirky and strange. It's also very slow-paced, meandering and uninvolving though. Hanks does his best in the lead, and the supporting cast is all good as well, but the film is just plain boring (it's hard to sit through). I like Tykwer's other work, especially 'CLOUD ATLAS' and 'RUN LOLA RUN', so I hope his next movie is a big improvement over this.

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I found this movie on Netflix and came to it without any expectations, having read no reviews beforehand. I wondered what Tom Hanks was up to now. Unlike many viewers, I don't see why every TH movie has to be a "hit". I found the Saudi Arabian locale and characters fascinating, wondering how they manage to build such opulent structures in a desert. To continue the holographic metaphor, the projected new-city-in-the-desert was more of a mirage than a reality.

I understand why critics at Rotten Tomatoes give it a 73% fresh rating: it is different and critics like that. Only 55% of the audience at RT enjoyed it because they were expecting something different, and audiences don't like that. As other reviewers have mentioned, the plot meanders and goes in odd directions. But that is part of the quirky attraction for me, at least. While the story ends a bit abruptly (too nicely/neatly?), Tom Hank's character is a sympathetic one that the audience willingly roots for.

29 May 2016 Film of Choice at The Plaza Dorchester Tonight - Hologram for the King. This film was a little surreal, I was never quite sure if the main character was dreaming the whole thing or not, this was not helped by a series of flashbacks that kept appearing throughout. However Tom Hanks was his usual sturdy unflappable self playing Alan a man who had failed in business and was now trying to succeed in a new career by selling an IT invention to an Arab King in Saudi Arabia. Failing in his marriage also and undergoing a bitter divorce, Alan is a bit lost when he arrives in Saudi and assumes the persona of a very beige type of man fighting his way through a very large sandstorm. However sparks of a more assertive person struggle through and we follow him on a journey of discovery. Not a huge raging river of a film, more a gentle stream meandering around and in danger of drying up in the Saudi desert. It doesn't dry up though and I found myself enjoying the tale immensely. Not everyone's cup of tea but worth a watch.

Good entertainment but Halaam not reflecting the real Saudi people &culture. Even though some of the characteristics and incidents are well performed, it's for the sake of performance without meaning and I found it uncomfortable. Making sure no bomb each time before starting engine? Massive disco party in Danish Embassy ? Female Muslim doctor checking foreigner? Taxi driver with desire of democratic movement...... What? Where is the beautiful Isramic spirit of giving and welcoming? Not a single scene... Directors must have had unwilling bitter personal experiences in Saudi / with Arabic people.

It's American film for American people. I am very well convinced that most of the scenes were filmed in Morrocco, not in Saudi.

Not every comedy is for everyone (at least I think this was supposed to be a comedy). Last week I saw The Big Lebowski (1998) at the local movie theater. Packed. People in Lebowski t-shirts, people who raised hands to show they'd seen the movie five, ten, twenty times, people anticipating the laugh lines. Eighteen years from now, nothing like that will happen with this film from German director Tom Twyker. Tom Hanks is American businessman Alan Clay, whose marriage is over and whose career as a salesman is on the skids. In what appears to be a last chance at success, he's sent to Saudi Arabia to sell the king on a costly holographic teleconferencing system for a new city being built in the desert. He encounters bureaucratic delays, clandestine alcohol consumption, confounding cultural gaps, and unexpected romance. Where I messed up was in thinking, "Oh, Tom Hanks. He's always great." Someone so talented just wouldn't be in a mediocre film. Why would he? And, I thought, "Oh, Dave Eggers wrote the book it's based on. Got lots of praise for it too." For example, New York Times reviewer Pico Iyer called the book "an anguished investigation into how and where American self-confidence got lost and — in the central word another lonely expat uses for Alan— 'defeated.'" And the Boston Globe: "True genius." Someplace along the way, the promise of the book and Hanks got lost, and a more disjointed and implausible narrative is hard to imagine. When we're told that the crowds Hanks saw at a mosque were there because "that's where the executions are," it's hard to believe that a Saudi woman would take the very great risk of being alone with him, an American infidel. Hanks does get to drive a very sexy 2015 Audi R8, briefly. But even that isn't worth the ticket price.