The
Following is a Capsule Review:
The Taliban. They are probably the most terrible,
horrifying group of men that the world has ever seen, right up there with
al-Qaeda and the Nazis. But, somehow, the director of Osama, Siddiq
Barmak, manages to minimize the impact of the sheer terror that they create.
Yes, I suppose that I’d call Osama a realistic hardship of a picture,
but I’d also call it a pretty awful one, too. A director should never lose
sight of his movie’s plot, characters, and themes, in favor of painting his
subject matter with a second coat of finish. Osama seems too polished
to feel real, and is therefore stripped of any of the meaning it could’ve
had. This had the chance to be the first great Afghani picture I’d ever
seen, but instead, it’s a superficial, detached, and anticlimactic one.
Marina Golbahari plays a little girl in
Afghanistan, under the clutches of the Taliban, as they violate many
citizens in her city. However, because girls cannot work there, she is not
able to earn a living for her small family, which is comprised of her, her
mother, and her grandmother. Money is non-existent, and they are
impoverished. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Posing under the
name Osama, she goes to work, dressed as a young boy. However, the plan
backfires when she is recruited, along with hundreds of other boys, to fight
for the Taliban.
Up until this point, Osama is executed with
mastery, taking no prisoners in a daring depiction of life in Afghanistan.
The last thirty minutes are just plain terrible, though, destroying the
perfect setup. The final act isn’t necessarily bad because of its material,
though. The reason Osama is an undeserving picture is because Barmak
ends it in a disappointing way. If he had stuck with every scene in this
cut, but added another thirty minutes of concluding material, it would’ve
enhanced the motion picture dramatically. Osama is only eighty-two
minutes long; additions would’ve been easily achievable, without it becoming
boring.
The project always has a stark feeling about it,
too. Whether a filmmaker is attempting to be a realist or not, they must
institute creativity in their project. Osama is a strictly
by-the-numbers movie—don’t let the beautiful, sweeping, artsy camera-work
fool you. Yet another missed opportunity to be added to 2004’s lengthy list,
Osama is just about as bland as they come. As far as all of the rave
reviews on it are concerned, I am baffled by critics’ opinions this time
around.
-Danny, Bucket Reviews (5.18.2004)
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