"My Son the Fanatic," writer Hanif Kureishi and director Udayan Prasad's 1997 film about Farid, an English-born Pakistani boy who becomes a devout Muslim who firebombs a brothel, is a train wreck. Its art is shoddy and its politics are repugnant. But Om Puri as Parvez, the taxi- driver father of the fanatic son, gives a performance that is solid gold. Rachel Griffiths, as a prostitute, is brilliant. Parvez (Om Puri) is a taxi driver in a depressed English mill town. He befriends Bettina (Griffiths) a prostitute. He works for a monstrous German sex tourist named S---t. Parvez's son, Farid, is engaged to the lovely Madeline Fingerhut, daughter of the chief of police. Farid breaks off his engagement and becomes the Muslim "fanatic" of the title. Parvez tries to stop his son's fanaticism. He also enters into an affair with Bettina, the prostitute, who loves him. "My Son the Fanatic" struggles to combine several disparate themes and subplots. It is never successful because it never probes deeply enough into any of its material. The film ends ambiguously; the viewer has no idea how any of the story strands will resolve themselves. The two most powerful features of the film, the only real reason to see the film, are Om Puri and Rachel Griffiths. They are very different and they are both powerhouses. Om Puri feels like a beating heart. He is totally believable, irresistibly lovable, and charismatic. Puri had smallpox when he was two and his face is cratered. These scars just make you stare at him all the more.Rachel Griffiths is perfect as Bettina, the stereotypical "hooker with a heart of gold." She's smart, and she's in pain. In spite of their age and culture differences, Parvez and Bettina's love is completely believable and poignant. It's clear that Parvez's wife Minoo is not providing him with passion, respect, or either emotional or physical intimacy. She calls him a "useless idiot," and at one point it appears she may leave him to go back to Pakistan. While Parvez resists his son's fanaticism, Minoo supports it. You really want to know – can a man fall in love with a prostitute? Parvez's friend Fizzy reminds him cruelly that Bettina has been penetrated by thousands of men. Could Parvez ever get over that? Could Parvez and Minoo separate in a way that worked for them both and spared them both great pain? Could Bettina settle down with one man? Could the couple survive the disdain of respectable people? Again, the chemistry between Parvez and Bettina is so compelling you really want the film to attempt to answer any of these questions. In fact, it answers none. Sadly, Parvez and Bettina are merely Hanif Kureishi's little wind-up toys. He has zero respect or affection for his own characters. Kureishi created Parvez and Bettina just to make his own, repugnant, political point. They are agitprop. With the exception of Madeline Fingerhut, who is on screen for about 120 seconds, every last Westerner the innocent Muslims encounter is a racist, a prostitute, or a monster. The thrust of "My Son the Fanatic" is this. Innocent, decent Pakistani Muslims immigrate to England and are confronted by orgies, naked women selling their bodies in the streets, racism, violence, and booze. The film is graphic and disgusting. There are gratuitous scenes of Bettina being used by her johns. The German sex tourist S– is depicted abusing men and women and hosting orgies. There is no logic in this; this man is shown to be ridiculously wealthy. A sex tourist with that kind of money would not travel to some grim northern English mill town. S–-, the German sex tourist for whom Parvez works, is named after feces. He is utterly disgusting. There are graphic scenes of his exploitation of Bettina. Later, she is shown with bruises from his beatings. He also beats Parvez. When Parvez goes out, he is cruelly mocked by an English comedian. There is no other English life depicted in "My Son the Fanatic." Not a single English person is kind to children or animals. The English are all violent, sexually perverse, racist scum. Farid becomes a fanatic after Madeline's father is rude to him. "You are the only pig I've ever wanted to eat," Farid tells his future father-in-law. All this graphic perversion is thrust into the viewer's face to emphasize: innocent, decent Muslims are forced by Western ugliness to become terrorists.Okay, let's rejoin planet Earth, shall we? On May 21, 2013, the BBC reported on 54 separate child sex slave rings in England run by Pakistani men. The descriptions of the activities of these gangs are nightmarish. Western Civilization did not corrupt these men; their corruption was already installed. And as for the charge that racism forces otherwise innocent men to become fanatics; please see Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarneav, two beloved, funded, coddled, immigrants who arrived in the US as "refugees." The refuge the US gave these men was used by them to murder innocents. The London Times named Hanif Kureishi one of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945." Given the shoddiness of the plotting and characterization of "My Son the Fanatic," and its skewed politics, one has to wonder why.

I don't feel like writing a long review on this one. I just want to say that, while not a great and classic film, this is a very good one that stands on the cusp of greatness. It is beautifully filmed and most importantly to me, it understands its characters and takes the time to explore the main ones in great detail. This a character study at its core, with a subplot about alienism within families and some of the many causes of it which include religion, age, culture, and the loss of intimacy for a spouse. I do not think, as others have said, that this is a movie about Islam or even religion at all. Although the participation (or not) in Islamic fundamentalism was a big issue for the family in the film, these same types of issues have erupted in families of all faiths since the dawn of religion and are in no way related solely to the Muslim faith. Certainly Islam is prominent in the film - but the film is not about the religion per se and does not go far in the direction of commenting on Islam. As a non-Muslim American, I did not get the sense from the movie that it was either promoting or condemning the Muslim faith, and I give great credit to the filmmakers for this. Islam is a hard subject to tackle and be able to get very far into while maintaining a middle ground, but that has been accomplished here and it does a great deal to elevate the film. Had I felt like I was being manipulated to feel one way or another about Islam, I would not have gotten nearly as much from the film as I did. But as it stands, I alternately felt respect for some of the Islamic men and their moral standards and commitment, and revulsion for some of their actions, such as the attack on the women's home (I realize why they did it, but that does not make it right). I felt that the movie gave me a chance to view Islam objectively without the need to question how I already felt; this gave me the ability to see all of the characters in the film as human beings instead of as representations of a religion. I wish that more films would take this tack - so many feel the need to steer the audience towards feeling one way or another about the always-volatile subject of religion.OK that was bit longer than I intended. But what I really wanted to ask was why we can't make quality films like this in the USA? The reason that I pointed out that this was a very good film but not quite a great one was because I wanted to comment on how even a very good film made elsewhere is so much better than any so-called "great" film made in the USA. Why can't we count on seeing films that explore people, that don't have an agenda, and that are more than opportunities for product placement money and mass marketing of action figures and video games? Well, I do know the answer, at least I think that I do. The almighty dollar. But does Hollywod really think that people in America are so stupid that all they want to see is another movie with Adam Sandler being an untalented hack, or Wesley Snipes as another cop in a movie where everything blows up, or Tommy Lee Jones as some sort of government agent, or Jennifer Aniston being as dull as she is, or Ben Stiller being as dull as he is, or anything with Cameron Diaz or Jennifer Lopez or anybody named Affleck? And I haven't even delved into such atrocities as Rob Schneider or David Spade. Actually my biggest fear is that all of their mega zillion dollar research proves conclusively that Americans really ARE that stupid. Now there's a horror flick for you...

After hearing about the terrible London blasts, which happened just a few days ago, the first thing which came to my mind was this movie. I watched a few years ago and loved it. Doubtless, I don't agree with B24: this is not a comedy at all, and it's nothing to share with "East is East". This movie is extremely forward-looking, not only because it – somehow – anticipated the "Clash of Civilization", but also because it gives you an extremely good description of all the difficulties that the first generation of Western-born people have to face.The character has to face reality: he is sure that he will never be able to be a real British (Western) citizen: despite his father's efforts and open-mind, the guy is too young to realize that if you don't accept yourself first, you will hardly find out people ready to welcome you. This is why he finds it more convenient (and much easier) to be surrounded by other Pakistani people. Among all the characters, the portrait of the "Imam" is very good: he is shown as an hypocritical man, always ready to blame the West, but still living in the UK, where he can get anything he wants: women, sex, movies… all those same things that – he says – are supposed to represent our flaws. But perhaps these people must forget something: despite their words, we're not afraid!

When Parez's son Farid gets engaged to the daughter of Chief Inspector Fingerhut it is the proudest moment of his life. Outside of this beacon of progress, Parez lives in a darker world as a taxi driver, who's main client is a prostitute called Bettina who services Johns in the back of his cab at times. While he becomes closer in his friendship to Bettina, he also introduces her to a new client (businessman Mr Schitz). His drinking increases and his empty life is exposed when Farid turns his back on his fiancé and his western life to study with a fundamentalist Islamic movement in the town.With a title and a plot that suggested a look into the family dynamics as a Pakistani boy born in the west turns to a more extreme side of his new religion. This aspect is a part of the film and, given recent events it is an interesting aspect but this film is more of a character study of Parvez who finds himself lost in the middle of the two extremes – his son's new religion and the religion of sex and debauchery as revealed to him by Mr Schitz. In the middle of these two lines and increasingly unsure of where he stands, Parez finds himself alone and looking at a life where he sinks ever further into his alcohol-driven depression, with the few moment he finds pleasure all turned into further depression by the views of others. It doesn't all hang together as well as I would have liked but Parez's story is consistently engaging and he as a character is very interesting. The story speaks generally about his struggle with his life: rejection by his son, disgust from his peers, a job going nowhere, a life of no pleasure. Parez blinds himself to so much and this is shown from the very first moment of the film where the Fingerhuts register only disapproval at him and his family.The subplots are not just used to contrast with one another; they are also interesting in their own right. Some of it doesn't totally work but it all functions well together with the hub of the film being Parez. If we had not felt for him then all the rest of this film would have come tumbling down but luckily the script writs his drifting personality very well and it is impossible not to sympathies with him even if we have not lived enough to totally empathise. With this script working for the character it also greatly helps that an actor like Puri is there to deliver it. As is so often the case, Puri delivers a great performance and really does the writing justice. He is the core of the film and it is one of his best performances. Unfortunately he is not as well supported, even if everyone is OK. Griffiths was a surprise find but her accent is not as good as her American one in Six Feet Under. Her performance is a bit dry and lacking character, she certainly didn't really convince me that she was a working girl on the cold streets of a northern town. Skarsgard is another strange find and he has little to do – his character is a bit empty because he is given an extreme to portray and that is what he does. Kurtha is OK as he makes his 'extreme' a little more accessible and real. Desai is in the background but she is good in her role. Generally the supporting cast are good and are realistic representatives of the Pakistani community but the film totally belongs to Puri, who is about as good as I've seen him here.Overall this is a good film mainly because Parez holds it all together. He is a well-written character but he is also really well delivered by Puri. With such a good character at the core the rest falls in place despite some weaknesses and the end result is a film that is occasionally amusing but manages to be much better as Parez's story – interesting, engaging and surprisingly moving. It may not be perfect but it is a film that is worth seeing and worth finding.