Samir gets caught and imprisoned in Yemen when selling explosives to Islamist terroritsts. In prison and after, he gets closer to the group and gets involved in their preparations for attacks in the US. At the same time, his path crosses frequrently with FBI agent Clayton, who is trying to identify the people behind the latest series of attacks against US citizens and who thinks Samir might play an important part in this.
The main problem about the film is that it has a major plot twist near half-time, and that from minute one of the movie, everybody is aware of this. So when the twist finally comes, it stirs more like a cringing feeling than one of surprise, and that cringe comes from a feeling of insult – how stupid, Mr Scriptwriter and Casting Director, do you guys really think we are? Did you ever sit together in the prep meetings?
Apart from that, the film is pretty solid, with nice exocticism of the Yemenite terrorist scene, an interesting choice of US and Canadian locations that are not yet completely over-filmed, and a good cast of actors to support it (most prominently Don Cheadle and Saïd Taghmaoui), both the Americans and the Arab ones. And the finale really is well designed, as at some point there is no possible hope of stopping the attacks, and that situation is well processed into a preyy satisfactory final blast.
thomas4cinema 