Kevin Macdonald has sensational nonfiction material in The Mauritanian, based on the best-selling memoir Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who spent 14 years incarcerated at the U.S.
Naval Base in Cuba without ever being charged with a crime. Macdonald is an exceptional documentary maker (Touching the Void) with a more uneven track record in narrative features (The Last King of Scotland is probably strongest among them), and this legal procedural remains strangely flat, despite its star power and a gripping central performance from Tahar Rahim as Slahi.
An unimpeachably well-intentioned treatment of a dark chapter in American justice, it's methodical and serious-minded to a fault.
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