Rosewater

Writer/Director Jon Stewarts’ Rosewater is a wonderful first film by the great comedian.

Jon took on a real-life story and had great actors to work with…Gael Garcia Bernal as the reporter Maziar Bahari, who was imprisoned in Iran for being a spy and Shohreh Ahgdashloo (X-Men: The Last Stand, The House of Sand and Fog) as his mother…, a top crew to work with, including Cinematographer Bobby Bukowski, Production Designer Gerald Sullivan and Editor Jay Rabinowitz and a fabulous composer in Lord of the Rings’ Howard Shore.

The only thing missing was a fresh pair of eyes for the storyline.   The reality is that being a prisoner is boring.  It’s the same-old-same-old every day.  If you didn’t know that, it comes across very quickly in this story.  The problem is that you don’t want to bore the audience watching a prisoner’s story.  A good 5 to 10 minutes of the middle of Rosewater could have been cut so as to avoid this issue. 
 

It would have been better to show the interesting fact that was only mentioned regarding the fact Bahari’s jailer/torturer (Nasser Faris) was as much a prisoner as he was.

Despite this, Rosewater is well worth seeing.  I give it a 3+ out of 5.