Ian Olds made the documentary Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi. It showed the working relationship between journalist Christian Parenti and his Afghan colleague Ajmal Naqshbandi during the Afghan War. Naqshbandi was killed by the Taliban.In this feature film, Osman (Dominic Rains) is a fixer/interpreter to an American journalist now living in rural northern California having been granted asylum status.Osman lives with the mother of his American journalist friend who obviously loves the thrill of being a war reporter. His mom Gloria (Melissa Leo) is a cop and Osman is very much a surrogate son to her.Osman needs to fit in, he gets a low paid job as a crime reporter and is very much a fish out of water as he encounters the low life in the town, not far from being hillbillies. One of them is Lindsay (James Franco) who when sober can construct the best hot tubs but disappears and might have killed someone.Osman also meets some hippy types who treat him nice but underneath there might also be tension as they test his masculinity being a displaced person.The story was weak and far fetched. There is a film to be told of an Afghan asylum seeker trying to fit in his host country. Here Osman covers up for Lindsay a man he hardly knows and who beat him up when they first met. He then later gets in a fight with some gangster types. The plot just stretched credibility.

Osman (Dominic Rains) worked in Afghanistan as a reporter/ interpreter. He left there to come to the US, living with cop Gloria (Melissa Leo) in a small town in California. She is the mother of a reporter still in Afghanistan.He meets a group of hippies and some rural folks. When a man is killed, all Osman wants to do is to find James Franco. The movie has stories and flashbacks to Afghanistan to show us how we are all alike...which I didn't really grasp as this was a community living out of the American mainstream. The people were bat sh** crazy.The plot seemed to drag in circles. The comparisons were half hearted efforts.Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity

This film tells the story of an Afghan journalist, who is granted political asylum in the United States of America. He settles in a small town, living with the local policewoman. As he begins his new life and start to forge connections with others, he finds himself unknowingly in much danger.The film has nice cinematography and lighting, but unfortunately that is about it. The story is rather poorly told, as things are not clearly explained. The relationship between Osman and the policewoman is quite confusing, as I clearly heard Osman calling the policewoman "mum" on two occasions. It is also hard to understand why Osman acted so irresponsibly, walking into danger when it is very apparent that some people are not to be messed with. Osman's persistent belief of Lindsay needing him is beyond me either, as Lindsay made no such statement, and there is no evidence to make Osman believe in that. The final scenes that happen in a weird commune is very confusing, and makes little sense. I do not understand the story at all.

Difficult if you've seen Borat (2006) not to draw obvious comparisons, despite "Burn Country" being a human drama, profound yet also somewhat entertaining.The character, Osman, (played by Dominic Rains) has arrived fresh from Afghanistan into small-town California, a romantic terrain of rolling mists, deserted beaches, Sequoia trees and American homesteads inhabited, it seems exclusively by white rednecks and new-age hippies. The refugee-Afghan interpreter, journalist and "fixer" intent on using journalism in his new life sports a mustache and stubble, together with more than a touch of that endearing, unpredictable, quirky nature that got Sacha Baron-Cohen's "Borat" in such trouble with his critics. The obvious nature of Osman's recent violent war- torn past, however that led him to seek asylum on the US is reflected in events that unfold during the not-so-innocent Afghan journalist's familiarization with American backwoods life – inhabited by a community whose tribal "answers" to the problems of their often violent way of living sometimes rivals even Osman's birthplace, continents away, supposedly proving that we are, under the skin not so different from one another.Osman, at one point purports his reason for coming to America being not the danger, but because he: "got the idea stuck in his head that life started somewhere else……. like you had to get out to have a chance of really living.."Since the justification for the journalist's asylum in America is never in doubt (with him unable to return home), the depiction of small- town America here ought make Americans feel rightly proud for welcoming a stranger so unconditionally into their close-knit tribe. Burn Country does, in a sense accentuate the need for community over city, notwithstanding its incredibly "fuzzy" attitude towards the dispensing law and order - the positive message from this movie being the power of Human Nature to eventually triumph over personal differences and other adversities.