Avis des critiques

With a script that draws strongly on Slahi’s book (initially redacted by the US military, but published in full after his release), in the practised hands of Kevin Macdonald The Mauritanian creates a powerful, even oppressive, sense of authenticity.

Its occasional clumsiness can be pardoned in light of its successes and it's a bold effort to explore in fiction an environment that has already been the subject of several documentaries.

There have been, and will no doubt continue to be, great documentaries about this particular period of history and the failings of the American government in dealing with a national tragedy. But “The Mauritanian” suggests that filmmakers still haven’t quite landed on a way to tell this story as a story.

The Mauritanian isn’t adding much to that conversation, other than putting the spotlight on one man’s story one more time. Yet in watching Rahim do his part to tell it, it’s possible to see someone get lost and delirious within a system designed to make folks disappear and slowly, surely find himself once again.

Perhaps the film falls into some expected narrative choices by telling us Salahi’s story through the eyes of white lawyers played by Jodie Foster... and Benedict Cumberbatch. Still, [Tahar] Rahim is so exceptional here. The resentment and pain and exhaustion he carries in his body so palpable and real that it’s impossible to consider The Mauritanian as anyone’s movie other than his.

As Macdonald’s film ventures further into its revelations about torture and injustice, Salahi himself gets lost in the storytelling, tragically becoming another face in the crowd of abused prisoners.

The Mauritanian plays by the numbers, hitting courtroom conspiracy drama beats dutifully but without any urgency... It’s an unfortunate irony that a movie about saving Salahi must itself be saved by the man portraying him.

Flavorless characters and a blizzard of flashbacks further repel our involvement in a drama whose timing, to say the least, is unfortunate.

The style is completely pedestrian—that is, until Macdonald decides to go for total psych-out with a lengthy sequence depicting Salahi’s torture... But as soon as it’s done, The Mauritanian returns to what has long been the default mode of critiquing the American project: people in suits stomping around hallways, talking about the Constitution.

Despite a powerful performance by Tahar Rahim in the title role... the movie lands, through no fault of its own other than timing, with a whiff of been-there, done-that.

A gruelling true-life story of incarceration and torture is made eminently watchable by a central performance from Tahar Rahim that ranks among his best.

What lifts it to a major degree is Rahim’s performance. We know little of Salahi’s life outside Guantánamo, dealing with him as a virtual blank slate, but he fills this in with a remarkably charismatic personality, riven with contradictions, and clinging to bursts of mischievous humour as a survival strategy.