The Visitor (2007)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Tom McCarthy

Cinematographer: Oliver Bokelberg

Composer: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek

Cast: Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira, Hiam Abbass

With a plot that contains more holes than Blackburn, Lancashire and character developments that wouldn’t look out of place on CBeebies or Nick Jr., McCarthy’s follow-up to the excellent The Station Agent (2003) - an exploration of a dour widower’s emotional re-awakening after he forms an unlikely friendship with an illegal immigrant from Syria - is, never the less, thanks mainly to Jenkins’s logic-defyingly authentic feeling central performance, a moving, entertaining, and almost believable experience. Iain.Stott