DVD Giveaway - Solitary Man
Ends Sep 12, 2010
Enter to win this DVD release starring Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, Susan Sarandan, and Mary-Louise Parker.
Rating: Country: USA Release Date: May 4, 2007 Distributor: Freestyle Releasing Director: · Jeff Renfroe Cast: · Peter Krause · Khaled Abol Naga · Richard Schiff · Kari Matchett · Ian Tracy Related Sites: ·IMDb: Civic Duty
Grade: B-
Six Feet Under's Peter Krause joins 24's Kari Matchett in this somewhat flawed but highly charged story of an obsessive and paranoid mind that is suddenly given something real to be obsessive and paranoid about: terrorist cells on the home front.
Krause plays unemployed accountant Terry Allen, who's had a string of lost jobs in a struggling post-9/11 economy. Matchett plays his long-suffering yet optimistic wife, Marla, who plies her trade as a photographer. They live together in a smallish apartment, and have been trying very hard to get a mortgage on their dream house -- something that is now threatened by Terry's unemployment.
Now housebound as he scours the want ads, Allen fills his day with non-stop headline news, all of which is a non-stop surfeit of terror alerts, political speeches, and warnings to be vigilant. And vigilant is what Terry becomes when he notices a new neighbor moving into the apartment across the courtyard from his. Young Gabe Hassan (Khaled Abol Naga) is ostensibly a college student earning his Master's degree in chemistry. But his odd hours and spartan living spark Allen's paranoia -- so much so that he actually follows Gabe, noting that he drives a long term rental car, works at a photocopy center with other Middle-Eastern men, and -- most suspiciously of all -- uses a payphone despite having a cell phone and picking up handfuls of ATM deposit envelopes. And when Terry finds that Gabe is receiving money from an Islamic academic funding agency, the Sons of Benevolence, he's convinced enough to call in the FBI.
Enter The West Wing's Richard Schiff as the overworked Agent Hillary. He listens patiently to all of Terry's evidence -- including a theory of money structuring that is either a mistake on the part of the writer or an intentional tell of Terry's paranoia. Terry thinks that Gabe is engaging in money structuring because of the multiple deposit envelopes, but he explains it all wrong, which is out of character for an accountant. (Money structuring is a method of making multiple deposits to multiple accounts so that you never make a single deposit large enough to trigger an alert on your account that the banks have to report; Terry explains it instead as a way of spreading money around to rake in multiple sources of interest, which just isn't mathematically possible.) Hillary takes the information and assures Terry the Bureau will look into things, then gently tells him to back off.
Which, somehow, Terry interprets as, "You've been deputized." He maintains a watch over Gabe's apartment, in the process not finding a job and thus losing his chance at the house his wife wanted. When Terry finally decides that maybe, just maybe, there's nothing to worry about (as both his wife and Agent Hillary have assured him) he goes down to talk to Gabe. But Gabe's not home, the door is ajar, and Terry is looking at a sink counter covered with beakers and tubing. His own terror alert is elevated to red, and he's officially over the deep end.
Captured. Terry holds Gabe hostage; now what?
(L-R: Naga, Krause)
Things spiral quickly into insanity. His wife having temporarily left him and the FBI writing him off as a crank, Terry takes matters into his own hands, bursting in on Gabe and taking him hostage. The plan is to force Gabe to tell Terry the truth, and then...
...well, Terry hasn't quite thought things through that far. Gabe has a plausible explanation for everything Terry has witnessed, and the SWAT team (led by The 4400's Ian Tracey) has the place surrounded. Terry now has everything to lose and is too deep into the mess not to be right in his convictions and suspicions.
Director Jeff Renfroe and writer Andrew Joiner clearly make an effort to tap into the fears of modern America of the enemy within, and the story succeeds on many levels. Krause gives us a terse and tense portrayal of the unbalanced Terry Allen, and Naga demonstrates the qualities that have made him a star in Egypt, flitting back and forth between personalities that could be perceived as either evil or misunderstood as easily as he shifts into frightened victim or amiable neighbor. Schiff has the government stiff angle down pat given his television experience in the role.
The story definitely went in surprising directions, and there's just enough left unexplained to leave the audience wondering after the credits have rolled -- was there truly something for Terry to have worried about? But for the most part, the message seems to be more of a caution about jumping too quickly, that there's not a bogeyman in the closet, and that our observations of Arabs in America is probably colored too darkly by the news reports of terrorism.
