Customer Reviews

Sorry, Haters

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This rollercoaster ride of a film was my #1 film when I saw it at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, and if nothing else, it is certainly a film that made the biggest impact. When businesswoman Phoebe (Penn) hops into a cab driven by the Arabic Ashade (Kechiche) neither he nor the audience could possibly predict where this cab drive will lead. Along the way we meet Eloise (Bouchez), Ashade's sister-in-law, who is struggling to provide assistance to her husband, who was deported from the country after running afoul of the heightened post 9/11 security procedures at the airport. There is also Phyllis (Sandra Oh) Phoebe's co-worker, who is unaware of the drama unfolding around her.

Stanzler wrote SORRY, HATERS (the title comes from an MTV-like network's reality show) in response to the emotional impact of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 on ordinary residents of New York City. His screenplay is complex and surprising, but with much more depth than some of the twists and turns might suggest. The acting by Kechiche, Bouchez, and Oh is top-notch, but it's Robin Wright Penn who truly shines in SORRY, HATERS and her fearless, powerful performance will leave you breathless.

Unfortunately we don't see very much of Robin Wright Penn; she's like a rare vintage wine, and you savor what little you get. In a movie full of twists and turns, Penn has us going as a high-powered exec, then a lowly number-cruncher, followed by a psycho terrorist, then suddenly she is a vulnerable sweatheart on the verge of redemption, followed by a cold-blooded psychopath. Sybil cannot compete with Robin Wright Penn; and that is giving away too much. To enjoy the full effect of the movie, it is better to take it at face value and just follow along to be astounded by the depth of disturbance that 9/11 could create in one individual.

So we're five years on from 9/11 now. Big Hollywood is coming out with its exploitation flicks. Having seen none of the forthcoming productions, I will reserve judgement, but did Nick Cage really need to go there? What we have in "Sorry, Haters" is something far more personal and downstream, a really complex 9/11 ramification that somehow transmogrifies a victim into a victimizer. The film's final twist may have been unnecessary, but at least the writer/director was able to one-up a savvy audience and went places that you just could not see coming. The movie is helped considerably by excellent supporting roles, Abdellatif Kechiche and Sandrah Oh shine in a tightly scripted nail-biter.

I haven't been so disturbed by a character in a film, since Robert DeNiro played Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Robin Wright Penn is Phoebe, a woman traumatized by the events of 9/11. Ashade--played by Abdel Kechiche--is a devout Muslim man whose brother has been incarcerated by our government for suspicious activities.

We meet Ashade as he desperately tries to raise funds for a lawyer, in order to free his brother. His attraction to his brother's wife complicates matters, leaving him guilt-ridden and shameful. Events are set into motion when Phoebe, a woman on the brink, gets into his taxi.

The nuanced script, written and directed by Jeff Stanzler, builds tension perfectly as Ashade is drawn deeper into Phoebe's madness and escalating purpose. The helplessness of his situation is palpable. Penn's performance is pitch-perfect as Phoebe, a semi-psychotic woman, who is looking for a way to matter. She embodies Phoebe's restlessness, and need to be acknowledged, perfectly; alternating between normalcy, insanity, and curiously, kindness, beautifully. We are powerless as we watch Phoebe's ties to reality dissolve, tangling the desperate and gullible Ashade, further into her dysfunctional lies.

Penn's performance as Phoebe left me inexplicably anxious. Thought-provoking and disturbing, this film will haunt you long after the final credits.

Great film, unpredictable and alarming
I love and own this movie but you may feel repulsed by Robin Wright Penn's character, Phoebe. This film is psychological drama. Miss Penn plays a highly disturbed single, jealous, manipulative individual living in New York City.

Penn's character hides these traits with a mousey, shy and indifferent demeanor. But wait, her personality is ever changing. From the beginning of the film you're trying to figure her character out along with an innocent taxi driver, played by Abdel Kechiche.

Some feel Robin's character became ill because of 911, I think she was already sick prior to the event and uses it to feed her psychosis. However you may interpret this movie you won't forget the alarming brutality of this film.

Robin Write Penn gives a riveting performance that sends you spinning with her changing personality.
Abdel Kechiche character, Ashade's life is victimized to the point of no return.
Unbelievable.........

I really enjoyed this movie. I had never even heard of it. When my friend put it in and I started watching I thought I knew exactly where it was headed and thought it was going to be a standard formula. This happened about 3 times thru the entire movie and everytime I was fooled and suprised. By the end I really was suprised and I really found that I enjoyed this movie. It was refreshing that somebody can and will take chances and break the usual hollywood formula. Robin Wright Penn, the only person I had heard of in the movie, was just great. Everybody else in it was great too but I have know idea who they are.

Phoebe (Robin Wright Penn), a divorced and detached staffer for a New York based, MTV style music video network, longs for the mood and feeling of 9/11--most especially for the way her self-absorbed boss Phyllis (Sandra Oh) had relied on her for emotional support back then. Trouble begins when Syrian-born cabdriver Ashade (actor/director Abdellatif Kechiche) picks up Phoebe and he tells her about his family's problems. Phoebe starts deceiving Ashade, letting him think she can help get his innocent brother released from detention in Guantanamo. After Ashade realizes Phoebe's mental instability and consequently distances himself from her, Phoebe turns ugly and plots revenge upon the Middle Easterner, and his French-Canadian sister-in-law (Eloise Bouchez), who is illegally resident in this country, as well.

SORRY, HATERS actually could have been a good psychodrama if it wasn't such an arty and self-indulgent mess. Being shot within in little over two weeks with a DV recorder, it stylistically has the feel of an amateur film posted on YouTube. Robin Wright Penn seems very uncomfortable in her role, looking in several scenes as if she's saying "What am I doing here?" to herself. Kechiche's lines are simply incomprehensible, mumbling in broken English and yelling in Arabic (while subtitles are provided for the Arabic dialogue, I suggest you activate your close captioning for whenever this guy speaks). Moreover, Kechiche, a Tunisian, is seriously miscast; Syrians, like the Lebanese, have much Greek, Roman, and Armenian blood flowing through their veins, and are generally more fair-skinned than this actor (think of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad). For some reason Americans--regardless of whichever end of the political spectrum they congregate--feel this need to stress the notion of color difference into our dealings with Muslims, despite those differences being slight and, for the most part, illusory.

What is most disturbing, however, is the attempt SORRY, HATERS makes to force upon sane and rational viewers its message that we Americans are really the nihilistic predators and terrorizers. As with many nowadays who are socially and politcally left-of-center, it wants for us to acknowledge our society's consumerist ambitions, in combination with increased emotional alienation and self-loathing, as something as hateful and destructive as any extreme Islamist ideology.

Speaking of self-loathing, this movie's writer and director, Jeff Stanzler, is overwhelmed by it. There is some major--albeit confused--contempt for the trendy and the 'progressive,' who, assumedly, inhabit Stanzler's personal and professional life. Naturally, a man as devout as Ashade (who keeps to his ablutions and prayers under even the most stressful situations) doesn't merely enter into some sort of relationship with a strange middle-aged American woman, he also handles dogs, allows alcohol in his home and, better yet, recognizes and supports his brother's kafir wife. Yes, of course, we do have the gratuitous scene of thuggish Homeland Security agents copping cheap feels (naturally) off of Ashade's homely sister-in-law after she passes out from interrogation. But it's those characters and types, otherwise often favorably portrayed in independent films such as this, which are the real targets of Stanzler's disdain: Phoebe's boss, Phyllis MacIntyre, the head of a major cable music channel, is married to a slight and diminutive house husband, complete with downy beard and a moptop of hair. Stanzler shows Phyllis to be mercenary and a narcissist, producing violent, expletive-ridden rap videos, but whose top rated program, "Sorry, Haters," a CRIBS-style reality show that glorifies the ghetto fabulous and all things crass and materialistic. Most poignant of all, however, is the type of woman that is Phoebe herself. While Phoebe is portrayed as a successful middle-aged professional, she is also emotionally stunted; a woman who compensates for her ex-husband having full custody of their daughter by doting over her little lapdog and yearning to recapture that moment when Phyllis (who Phoebe despises otherwise) was afraid that the terrorists were coming to get her next and looked to her for security and comfort. Such women once represented the feminist ideal, but Stanzler reduces them to parodies, making it seem as if they are symptomatic of the West's decadence and dysfunction that is polluting the rest of the world. He also seems to be saying that it is from women such as these that men such as Ashade or even the 9/11 hijackers must struggle against with their pious purity. Such sentiments are a disgrace and are as spit in the face of every New Yorker who suffered through that day, regardless of whatever their lifestyles or politics. Others may wonder what it would take to make a Jeff Stanzler understand the trauma and loss of that day. Unfortunately, the Jeff Stanzlers of this country do understand, and they just don't care.

Now about the little dog...Stanzler makes a really cheap shot at the very end with that little pooch. While it is quite unlikely, if I ever come across the man he's got a slap to the back of his head coming from me over the sick finale to this sorry mess of a movie, which stinks worse than a well used port-a-potty on a summer's hottest day.

A Muslim cab driver, who is taking care of his brother's wife and son while the brother is missing, gives a ride to a mysterious woman. This little incident leads both people to reveal their lives to each other, and discover each other's flaws. While some flaws are forgivable, others are fatal as you will discover when watching the movie.

I'm pleasantly surprised that finally an American movie portrays goodness in Muslims. While others are criticizing the movie for showing unbelievable evil in humans, I think that a movie needs to use some extra measures to show the contrast between good and evil, or as Buddha once put it: "There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it. "

All the verbiage about muslims and Americans and the whole decadent American culture vs. Good Muslims is really secondary which is actually quite surprising. You get the feeling that the movie was banking on the Muslim/American cultural clash in order to sell itself to a post-9/11 world but the heart of the story is classic femme fatale noir and it pretty much rises and falls on that basic story.

A cab driver picks up a really mean looking woman played by Robin Wright Penn. From the outset, you can tell that's something is wrong with her. She isn't smiling. She's making the cab driver go to New Jersey. She's giving the classic line about "I'll pay you the total of whatever you made last night" which Tom Cruise used in Collateral (Two-Disc Special Edition). Meanwhile the cab driver is presented as a good guy who prays regularly and works hard for his extended family.

The political stuff comes pretty hard when Robin Wright Penn invades the cab driver's home to drink wine and complain about how she's working for an MTV Reality Show called "Sorry, Haters" which features a lot of rich people being ugly rich. She wants him to pull a terrorist attack. He wants to get his brother out of jail and immigrate. She's all full of hatred for America and he's a goodhearted muslim who might have problems but he's basically patriotic even when the cops haul his sister-in-law away and impound his cab based on an anonymous tip from Penn.

However, the political material cannot sustain the story. The meat of the story is Robin Wright Penn trying to use the muslim cab driver to carry out her agenda and manipulating him all along the way. And here's where things start to go south. Robin Wright Penn is pretty good as the perpetually frowning crabby woman who seems to hate everything but she's too good at playing this unpleasant creep. So good that you wonder how ANYONE could be roped in by her stories and lies. All noir movies with femme fatales tend to have stupid men who get messed up by evil women, but the cab driver character is so stupid that you just can't really sympathize.

At first, you can give him the benefit of the doubt. Sure, when she has him drive her all the way to New Jersey to vandalize a car and then drive off, he might be innocent. Hell, when she yells at him for claiming that he made $160 the previous night and that it's clearly a lie, he might be that desperate for a fare that he will let a horrible creep bully him. Of course, I paid a cab driver $30 to take me from Midtown to Washington Heights and that trip took him 20 minutes tops so I don't see why a cabbie can't make 160.

And then it gets even lamer. She keeps claiming that she's calling her lawyer even though it's obvious that it's after midnight and he's never going to pick up. When he stops at his house and leaves her in the cab, she comes in and starts drinking and complaining. He goes back to her office with her and listens to her complain even more. Even when she steals all of his money and gets caught lying about her entire identity he's still willing to believe her. By the end, he's gone from an innocent muslim to the stupidest man in the world. You kind of think that he's going to turn the tables on her and he almost looks like he's going to do that for a second, but then he goes back and trusts that she's really changed now.

Noir movies have their same beats but they work because we believe that we can be in this situation; but no one can be as stupid as this cab driver. And that kills the movie.

Can terrorism morph from within? Will American citizens, so angry and frustrated, one day commit acts of barbarism? These are the questions at the center of oddly titled Sorry, Haters, a subversive, shocking and totally disturbing film that attempts to project a post 9/11 scenario of what could happen given the right emotional vacuum.

Hardworking Syrian cabdriver Ashade (Abdellatif Kechiche) gets more that he bargained for when he picks up the smartly dressed hard-charging career woman Phoebe (Robin Wright Penn). The naive Ashade just wants to earn enough money to pay for an immigration lawyer and support his sister-in-law who is illegally in the country.

We realize pretty early on that there's something quite not right about this a Manhattan professional who works for Q Dog TV, a video music network. The movie begins at night, with Phoebe anxiously directing Ashade to take her to a New Jersey suburb, where she stealthily approaches a home, bursts into tears, and then scratches the side of a new Lexus with a rock.

Unable to shake her - after all, he is a gentleman - she ends up sharing a bottle of wine with Ashade and his sister-in-law. When Phoebe finds out that Ashade, a Syrian, needs help - his brother has been arrested for alleged ties to a suspected terrorist - she offers to step in. But is Phoebe all that she seems? Ashade begins to really freak out when she suggests the two of them "do some damage," and then remarks, "I don't know anything about munitions."

Without giving any more of the plot away, it soon becomes obvious that both Ashade and Phoebe are heading for some sort of cross-cultural showdown. Phoebe is indeed bad news, a sort of damaged and insecure soul, who is angry at the world and Muslims and also bitterly resents her self-obsessed best friend Phyllis (Sandra Ho) for being more successful than she is.

Obviously, 9/11 has had a profoundly negative effect on this woman, but the scars also go much deeper, manifesting in a deep-seated hatred for everything that America and the West seems to represent. The film is gritty and offbeat and totally provocative, as we witness Phoebe thoroughly unraveling and Ashade's ultimate frustration at letting this crazy woman into his life.

Writer/director Jeff Stanzler has perfectly captured the impression of being off-kilter that all New Yorkers probably had at some stage since 9/11. But the film is mostly all about the actors, Kechiche gives a reserved and superbly troubled performance; and Wright-Penn, whose character's behavior is never predictable and seldom understandable, anchors the film. Her crippling coffers of resentment and wrath steadily rise to the surface, and it's a scary monster in full bloom, essentially horrific to watch.

Sorry, Haters works on a number of levels - as a psychological thriller and as an examination of post-9/11 relations between Muslims and everyone else. And then there's the horrific conclusion, which is destined to leave audiences thinking and talking about it for hours after the movie has concluded. Mike Leonard August 06.

This film is so full of cliches and rediculous scenes that it makes one want to cry. The 'religious' Syrian Muslim man grabbing dogs and allowing alcohol in his house, his uncovered sister in law who looks and speaks french, the screaming white women who is really 'crazy' and allows herself to be molested and beaten and that takes part in self mutilation. This is just a rediculous film that in its weak attempts to 'explode prejudice' and 'deal with 9/11' fails miserably.

The director evidently felt that by making the film complicated and giving it 'twists and turns' and trying to be unpredictable that this would solve the problem of the characters, neither of which are realistic or honest. The only thing slightly honest is that the 'religious' Muslim wants to marry the western businesswoman and that she in turn is inticed by her own racist orientalism.

Seth J. Frantzman