A Hologram for the King (2016)

Take Hanks out and it would really struggle. Not that Tom is great, he's just doing his thing, like likeable character that's having a rough ride but making the best of it. Good old Tom. He plays an American businessman, a salesman who tasted success, but it's years behind him. Now he's in Saudi Arabia trying to rekindle his career, but floundering in a country that doesn't work the way he's used to. It's a battle and you root for Tom... even if it's not always clear what he's fighting for. It's all a little bit dreamlike and needlessly confusing. That said, its jumbled nature makes it oddly endearing. It twists and twists and twists, falls a bit flat, then gets up again. Does this review make any sense? No? Good! Bang on with the film.

One of those European films that chooses an American star to look more acceptable for American audiences, German Director Tom Tykwer's "A Hologram for the King" still looks irredeemably continental, with all the pluses and minuses that that entails.Basically, that means visually interesting, thought-provoking, weird, and not always seeming to make perfect sense!Primarily, Hanks plays (pretty straight, if with moments of comedy) a US businessman working at high level in sales, whose life has been uneven and seems to have gone into a bit of a downward spiral as middle age takes hold. Tellingly, and perhaps as a highlight of this film, Hanks's face glues on a broader and broader smile as he meets his more-youthful team each day, notwithstanding the weird and trying circumstances all are facing as they set up - VERY slowly - to make a high-tech sales pitch in Saud Arabia.Also importantly, our man Alan Clay is both a purveyor and a victim of globalisation, and this topic looms large a couple of times in the film (including at its - again telling - end). Globalisation has put a barrier between Alan and his traditionalist father and is of course what explains Alan's globetrotting in the first place. He is present in countries with Western-looking hotels and advertising hoardings on the surface, but with actually an entirely different culture just (a few millimetres) below that surface.Where "weird" is concerned, well that word is liable to arise from time to time in the watcher of this film (most especially on the scene of a party for diplomats who apparently respond to the strain of their somewhat repressive posting by abandoning absolutely all inhibitions!) But of course the weirdness does not stand in the way of what can at times be absolutely beautiful filming, featuring many scenes of simply gorgeous places where the desert meets the sea.Except that it is not THAT desert and not THAT sea, for this piece is filmed in Morocco (and Egypt), but only a little in Saudi; and that's a deflating discovery, as a key pleasure for the filmgoer is to cogitate on what Saudi Arabia is like. The best we can do here is imagine ... on the basis of concocted Arabia-like locations, and that's a great pity.Presumably, the distance from the true locations offered the artistic distance necessary to achieve the somewhat negative and critical portrayal that we get here, of Saudis as haughty, enigmatic, unpredictable, unreliable (at least from a Western point of view), restricters of rights, users of the death penalty and so on ... as well as of course super-rich! In turn, their kingdom is portrayed here - perhaps authentically - as an edgy place in which various people fear various things, but also endlessly try to "get round" impositions. There's thus considerable hypocrisy on show, to add to the other depicted downsides.Certainly, the first few semi-comedic scenes of the film are intended to show us how completely alienated the Hanks character Alan may be feeling in this new world. But helping him bridge the gap is driver and guide Yousef - a pleasantly dodgy character who offers a sympathetic highlight of the film ... but is in fact played by New York-born Alexander Black!Now that is another somewhat weird circumstance.And yet all this is the strange new world the Hanks character ultimately chooses to live and work in, having fallen in love with a lady doctor who treats his afflictions physical and mental. (And since said doctor is played by London-born Sarita Choudhury, who is half-Indian, we are again being presented with something that is not quite what it is making out to be).Now does the whole possibly hang together as a story? Not really, for how could it?And naturally, some of this is down to Dave Eggers, who wrote the original novel (as he also wrote the in-some-ways-very-innovative "The Circle", whose screen version also features Hanks).However, a certain amount of pleasure (and cross-cultural enlightenment) is to be had as we follow Alan through the aforesaid, pretty unlikely transition, hence I'm risking a 7 for an effort that is fairly unique (though ever-so-slightly recalling the (better?) 2011 film-of-the-book "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen").

I really liked this movie, but I understand it is culturally distasteful and Hollywood's way of mocking the Saudi Arabian culture. Your common sense tells you there would be not bikinis in a store's window display. No Saudi Arabian woman, married or otherwise,would go snorkeling topless when the risks of getting caught is death. So even though the SA doctor and Tom Hanks have chemistry and a cute romance, it's completely implausible. As far as the Embassy party scene, the illegal booze, drug use, and business professional hooking up in private, that happens behind closed doors yet it was insulting to Muslims for them to include it even though I thought the scenes were interesting. Yet, I enjoyed this movie and seeing middle aged love besides a sixty year old man hooking up with a bubbly twenty something. Hank's character struggle is realistic like many Americans are facing now trying to keep their head above water drowning in debt,dwindling job opportunities, stagnant pay, lack of job security, outsourcing, and constant of uncertainty. His character was very relatable struggling with the disappointments in his life and trying to continue to feel alive in an ever changing world. I loved the scenery of Saudi Arabia, the exotic deserts, the beautiful women even covered up in their hijabs, the beautiful white sand beaches, large spacious homes, it's like their living like kings in the desert. It was a beauty movie to watch with exotic locations and one of my favorite scenes is when he meets the SA businessman giving him a taste of the SA wealth. No it's completely accurate and devout Muslims will find this movie insulting because of the vices shown. Yet, I enjoy this fantasy of a movie mixed with reality of living in a global unpredictable world.

Tom Hanks plays a fish-out-of-water businessman in this tale of culture shock, self- doubt and discovery. Set amidst the flat desert plains of Saudi Arabia, Hanks aims to mend his financial struggles by selling an absentee king on a gimmicky hologram- driven teleconferencing solution. Along the way, he encounters no shortage of roadblocks, be they personal, bureaucratic, cultural or medical, and eventually recognizes it as a growth opportunity. This is a conflicted picture, much in the same way our leading man plays a conflicted individual. Nailing down a steady tone seems difficult; the film opens with a loose, cartoonish musical number, then settles into a fast-paced corporate shuffle before cutting that loose and becoming a warm-hearted buddy picture and, finally, a contemplative romance. All this in a very trim, quick ninety minutes. Social norms are a steady focus, shining a flashlight on the immense gap between everyday life as an American and as a Saudi, but in the end it feels like those are only superficial, easily brushed aside to make way for a happy ending. That climax leaves us with dozens of loose ends, half-heartedly explored threads that are inspected and discarded like an inattentive child digging through his toybox. It all feels very loose and light, like we've read a summary but not the entire story. There's a compelling yarn buried somewhere within A Hologram for the King, but we only skim the surface. Interesting and original but quite limited.