‘The Mauritanian’: Film Review
David Rooney
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.