Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

chris_miller-83959 I was fascinated by Iranian methods of interrogation of prisoners. It really looked like gas-lighting and twisting of reality. There was a haunting pretense of pseudo civility followed by pure evil.

sanjin_9632 When I first heard about this, I thought it was going to be a documentary, because I wouldn't have expected Jon Stewart to tackle a biographical feature. There's a lot of things wrong with this movie. For example, when I envision detainment in an Iranian prison, this is certainly not the way I'd imagine it. Too soft. My portrayal of the treatment of alleged spies in Islamic countries would probably be much worse. He was detained for almost 4 months, which in terms of sentencing, and *doing time* in general isn't considered a real sentence. The only scene which sort of seemed authentic is when the *torturer* threatened to shoot Gael, but it would've been better if he'd done the same thing for a week and not just once.All in all, it's a nice little story. After reading up on Maziar Barhadi, I'm not quite sure what to think. Who knows if someone's really a spy or not? He could've just as easily been a spy, still. This movie is very light, romanticized, liberal propaganda. I'm giving this movie a 4.8/10 just because it's low budget. Sort of.

grantss Decent debut from Jon Stewart.The true story of Maziar Bahari, an Iran-Canadian Newsweek journalist who went back to Iran in 2009 to cover the national elections. Once the despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, wins the Presidency, protests breaks out. After filming and reporting on the election and protests, Bahari is arrested, imprisoned and tortured.The first film, as director, for Jon Stewart, of The Daily Show fame. He also wrote the screenplay, adapted from Bahari's book "Then they came for me". A good place for Stewart to start as he knows Bahari well and had interviewed him many times on The Daily Show. Plus, Bahari's light-hearted interview with Jason Jones on The Daily Show is used against him during his arrest.An interesting story, though doesn't really cover any new ground regarding freedom and how despots treat their people. Not a very compelling story, for this reason. Stewart pretty much covers the story in linear, blow-by-blow fashion, with the only departure from this being that the first scene is Bahari's arrest, and then we go back in time to see what lead to it.Solid work from Gael Garcia Bernal in the lead role. Supporting cast are fine too.A good enough start from Jon Stewart. He had a story he wanted to tell, and he told it. With experience and confidence he'll get better at telling stories in movie form.

Tom Dooley Based on the book 'And then they came for me' by Maziar Bahari who is a London based Iranian journalist. Both his father and sister were victims of the State. First under the Shah and then the Ayatollah's both for being Communists.He travelled to Iran to cover the elections of 2009; the results were wildly contested by the public and international media – seeing them as rigged. Bahari covered the subsequent rioting and the lethal clamp down by the Iranian forces and got the news out; this is a country where the State controls all aspects of life including access to satellite programmes, books and news. For that he was arrested and tortured; this is his story.This film was made by Jon Stewart who interviewed Bahari for a spoof he did on his show. That footage was used to try to prove Bahari was a spy for the corrupt West. Gael Garcia Bernal stars as Bahari and as always puts in a superb performance – he is one of my favourite actors so I am a bit biased. This is a film that takes its time but it manages to still be hard hitting enough to have the impact I feel it was aiming for. It uses genuine footage as well to recreate the times and it a better watch for it. One for fans of World cinema that is easy to recommend.