The Mau­ri­tan­ian

The prob­lem with mak­ing films based on real-life dra­mas is that, nine times out of 10, we already know how they end. That hasn’t pre­vent­ed Kevin Mac­don­ald from mak­ing a film about an inmate of Guan­tanamo Bay – incar­cer­at­ed on sus­pi­cion of hav­ing had a ten­u­ous but incrim­i­nat­ing link to the folks who mas­ter­mind­ed the ⁹⁄₁₁ attacks – who any vil­lage idiot could dis­cern is inno­cent from the first sec­ond he crops up on screen.

As soft-fea­tured Mau­ri­tan­ian ex-sol­dier and soon-to-be-fam­i­ly man Mohame­dou Ould Salahi, Tahar Rahim unleash­es a furtive charm offen­sive as he is bru­tal­ly whisked away by US forces due to his brother’s con­nec­tions to Osama Bin Laden, as well as his own pos­ses­sion of some dodgy text messages.

Enter Jodie Foster’s grat­ing­ly right­eous defence attor­ney who, despite a list of charges that are strewn with redact­ed lines, is con­vinced that it’s her duty to give Salahi his day in court, even if that means lock­ing horns with shad­owy fix­tures work­ing in var­i­ous US fed­er­al agencies.

While indi­vid­ual scenes are flu­ent and dra­mat­ic enough, there’s the over­ar­ch­ing feel­ing that this film got com­plete­ly lost on its way to the mid-’00s as it rages on about how dehu­man­is­ing the Bush régime’s advanced inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques were, as if that wasn’t already com­mon knowledge.

Still, there’s ample chem­istry between Fos­ter and Rahim, as she has to ini­tial­ly con­vince him that she is gen­uine­ly there to help him (as opposed to just anoth­er con­niv­ing mil­i­tary guard attempt­ing to extract infor­ma­tion that’s not there).

It becomes clear ear­ly on that the film, adapt­ed from Salahi’s own mem­oir, ​‘Guan­tanamo Diary’, wants to show­case the bar­barism of such black site stock­ades rather than to make the audi­ence ques­tion the inno­cence – how­ev­er faint­ly – of this wronged man.