The Rendezvous

I saw a half decent rating for this film so I decided to watch. Within the first 20 minutes I realized how terribly silly this film was. It is as if a bunch of children put together a story. Our heroes wake up after being captured and are confronted with a seven-year-old child holding a gun and keeping watch on the prisoners. You must be kidding me. Confrontation with the adults includes slapstick, jokey comedy that doesn't work at all. Still held at gunpoint, our heroine first insists that she doesn't know or care about her fellow captive. Then a moment later she seems to care. The ridiculous miraculous escape (or there wouldn't be a movie) is so contrived as to wonder what the director was thinking. Was he trying to make a movie like The Mummy? It certainly wasn't working. At all.

The look of the film is ok. It seems like an attempt to take advantage of a foreign city. And it's exactly like what other reviewers describe - an airy adventure tour of a city in Jordan. The dialogue, acting and especially the script is extremely amateurish. If you want to take a tour of Amman and value your time, there are plenty of other documentaries that will do the job effectively.

Watching this movie is like watching a prolonged episode of "Castle" without Nathan Fillion. The concept is a good one, the visuals are great. The story is cliche, and the acting is wooden. Perhaps with a good writer and a director who can get more than a mail-in performance from the actors, this could have been a modern day "The Man Who Knew Too Much." Instead, we get "Kate Beckett Gets Lost in the Desert". A waste of an actress's talent and celluloid.

Rachel goes to Jordan to identify her brother's body, there she is involved in a religious mystery with help of us agent, Jake. They get kidnapped, wander through the dessert, and of course, people whom seem like friends are really enemies.

FINAL VERDICT: OK, reminded me of Romancing the Stone except this takes place in the dessert and it is not as good. OK for a background movie while you do other things.

This film has some plot problems, and there are a couple of pivotal scenes that were less than perfectly executed, but it's just so darn charming that it's easy to overlook any flaws and get swept away by the breathtaking cinematography, beautiful score, and engaging performances by the two main actors.

Katic and Jaffrey have the kind of chemistry every filmmaker dreams of for their romantic leads but very few get. There's such a distinct Old Hollywood vibe to their interactions that it makes you nostalgic for the good old days when movies were there to provide fun entertainment and escapism, not weigh you down with grit and stark realism. Their banter is witty and well-paced without feeling forced or cliché, and while at times your modern mindset may wish the script would allow for some deeper emotional reactions to the subject matter, it's their uncontainable charm and playfulness that make this movie worthwhile.

It's also refreshing to see a Muslim-American man as the romantic hero, who works for the government, cracks lame jokes, brushes off stereotypes with nonchalance, rolls his eyes in frustration at extreme religious ideology, and overall acts like an ordinary guy who finds himself on a wild adventure with an ordinary gal, who just happens to be Jewish. (This dynamic was much more of a focus and explored in much greater detail in the book this movie is based on, A New Song by Sarah Isaias, but is treated as no big deal in the movie, which felt like a bit of a missed opportunity but also was strangely encouraging at the same time. Because maybe it IS no big deal, and people from different religions really CAN respect each other as people and work together and even be attracted to each other without challenging the other's belief system or getting hung up on their differences. Crazy thought, right?) Hollywood needs more of this.

Bottom line: This is a fun little adventure film, a treasure hunt, a romantic comedy with a little something extra to make you think, and I highly enjoyed it.

Wow, this was not what I expected from Stana Katic. The main 'plot' of the movie seems to be how many scenery shots they can get of the Middle East. Although beautiful, that's most of the movie, with a little story thrown in as an afterthought.

The story itself was dull and extremely predictable. It's like it was written by a fourth-grader that wants to be a playwright some day.

It also felt a Lot like Castle in tone. All they needed was Fillion, better writing, and it could have been a Castle movie.

At least in this, Raza Jaffrey couldn't act his way out of a box (which would have been more interesting to see). Even Katic's performance was stiff and almost emotionless.

Except for the panoramic views, it was just plain terrible.