The Mauritanian

So while Macdonald manages to come up with one of the most impressively brutal cut-to-black endings in recent memory, the rest of this feature cannot hope to match the power of his cast.

The Mauritanian is effective in communicating the overall vibe a movie like this needs: the tension, the claustrophobia, and the increasingly pervasive sense that something is wrong here.

The Mauritanian wants to be a fusion of Papillon and A Few Good Men, but it cannot work out whether it wants to make a purely emotive argument, or engage in a brutal cross-examination of the legal system.

The Mauritanian is a bit of a throwback -- a solid, old-fashioned piece of entertainment, but not a great movie.

Rahim is supplying soul and some interesting shades of gray to this portraiture. He's giving you a person in the middle of what often feels like a broad prestige-drama sketch.

Luckily, "The Mauritanian," directed by Kevin Macdonald, gets one thing very right: Tahar Rahim's masterful central performance.

The Mauritanian has a political edge and points to make, emphasising in polarised times that the constitutional aberration of Guantánamo cuts across the partisan divide.

An emotional payoff that Macdonald has quietly engineered. The cumulative effect catches you off guard, He's crafted a portrait of systemic injustice where the characters come before the politics.

A powerful, captivating and expertly paced film whose biggest success is showing the overflowing humanity of a man that, despite it all, refused to give up hope.

It's worth seeing... but it is lacking in terms of dramatic rising and falling and action and character development.