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.

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.

Ben Kingsley is one of those actors that is always amazing but takes on such a wide variety of strange roles that sometimes he gets thrown into something that he just can't save. At the same time he has delivered so many brilliant performances that those few missteps can be ignored. Fresh of the triumph of his awesome performance in Iron Man 3 comes his latest film A Common Man alongside Ben Cross. Will this be another great performance to add to his impressive resume or be lost in struggling film?

A Common Man follows a terrorist who plants several bombs around the city of Colombo, Sri Lanka and threatens to detonate them unless prisoners are released. This is one of those movies that initially looks fairly low budget and could have easily fallen into obscurity if not for the star power of Ben Kingsley. The film opens leaving little mystery to what is happening and what Kingsley's character is up to or so you think. Thanks to some clever writing and another great performance by Kingsley this film takes an interesting and unexpected turn to create a film that is much better than it would have been. On the flip side most of those around the rest of the film deliver OK performances with Ben Cross seemingly just walking through his performance and offering nothing all that much the character or the film. This film plays as more of a thriller as opposed to an action film and leads you down a path that has been touched on numerous times, but quickly makes a U-turn into a completely different direction.

This is an intriguing film that manages to create a story that is sure to keep you invested until the very end. As mentioned before while most of the performances do nothing to really suck you in, its Kingsley's performance that carries this movie. This isn't a perfect movie by any means, but does offer some interesting twists and turns that make this film worth checking out.

"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.

Any movie with Ben Kingsley surely cant be as bad as reviews here said. Really, I love this guy. But after seeing "a common man", I stand corrected. Its even worse. The script is ridiculous, the dialog so bad its almost hilarious, the music is painfully bad, the acting absolute rubbish. I hate to say it, but even Kingsley is anything but impressive in this movie.

Throughout the movie I kept thinking there has to be a back-story to this. How did this thing ever get made and why oh why did Kingsley ever sign up for it?

I got to write a few more lines before I can submit this. But I have nothing else to say. Don't waste your time on this.