By Ben Miller
New and innovative films inevitably lead to imitators. 2018's Searching is the obvious predecessor to Profile, the new film from Russian filmmaker (and Searching producer) Timur Bekmambetov. While the film ratchets up the tension to almost unbearable levels, script issues and over-dramatic characterizations turn this film into a bloated mess, albeit a watchable one.
Valene Kane stars as Amy Whittaker, a struggling freelance journalist who has an idea for a story: what if she can get recruited by Syrian jihadists in order to discover their tactics? Amy creates a fake Facebook profile and in no time at all, "Melody" is befriended by Bilel (Shazad Latif), a London-born Isis member living in Syria...
New and innovative films inevitably lead to imitators. 2018's Searching is the obvious predecessor to Profile, the new film from Russian filmmaker (and Searching producer) Timur Bekmambetov. While the film ratchets up the tension to almost unbearable levels, script issues and over-dramatic characterizations turn this film into a bloated mess, albeit a watchable one.
Valene Kane stars as Amy Whittaker, a struggling freelance journalist who has an idea for a story: what if she can get recruited by Syrian jihadists in order to discover their tactics? Amy creates a fake Facebook profile and in no time at all, "Melody" is befriended by Bilel (Shazad Latif), a London-born Isis member living in Syria...
- 5/17/2021
- by Ben Miller
- FilmExperience
Timur Bekmambetov's latest film Profile has been receiving high marks for its unique narrative gimmick that generates a high level of intensity and we are lucky enough to share an exclusive clip from the film which opens today, May 14! Based upon the non-fiction book "In The Skin of a Jihadist" by Anna Erelle, Profile follows a journalist named Amy Whittaker (Valene…...
- 5/14/2021
- by Gaius Bolling
- JoBlo.com
"You would never lie to me," asks Abu Bilel Al-Britani, a hunkish and charming Jihadi recruiter for Isis, as he skypes from with Amy Whittaker in her South London flat. But we are well into the age of online 'Catfishing,' and Amy is not one of the many lost and lonely young European women whom Isis lured to become war-brides in Raqqa and the swelling Islamic State Caliphate. She is actually a freelance journalist who has pitched a story to one of her regular editors about uncovering the process of how savvy Isis operators convince alienated westerners to drop their lives and fly to war torn Syria and re-invent their live 'with purpose' in the recent 7 year...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 7/17/2018
- Screen Anarchy
The best and most harrowing addition to the quickly growing sub-genre of movies that take place entirely within the space of a computer screen, Timur Bekmambetov’s “Profile” brings a new and much-needed dimension to its conceit by using it in the service of a semi-realistic story. That’s uncharted territory for a type of filmmaking which — like so many cinematic innovations before it — was born out of shlock. Asinine early attempts like Nacho Vigalando’s “Open Windows” suggested that a degree of absurdity was required to justify the aesthetic, while “Unfriended” (which Bekmambetov produced) was only willing to trace the connection between digital relationships and real-world consequences to a certain point; what began as a cautionary tale about online bullying ended as a supernatural horror story about a Skype-loving demon.
“Profile” is different. While nobody is ever going to confuse the movie for a documentary — making for at...
“Profile” is different. While nobody is ever going to confuse the movie for a documentary — making for at...
- 2/17/2018
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
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