Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Igal Naor | ... | Arshad El-Masri | |
Stewart Scudamore | ... | Tariq | |
Omid Djalili | ... | Mahmud Nasir | |
James Krishna Floyd | ... | Gary Page (as James Floyd) | |
Archie Panjabi | ... | Saamiya Nasir | |
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Leah Fatania | ... | Nabi Nasir |
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Stuart Antony | ... | Drummer |
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Scott Walters | ... | Delivery Guy |
Mina Anwar | ... | Muna | |
Amit Shah | ... | Rashid Nasir | |
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Soraya Radford | ... | Uzma |
Ravin J. Ganatra | ... | Fahad (as Ravin Ganatra) | |
Christian Lees | ... | Bar Mitzvah Twin Louis | |
Jonah Lees | ... | Bar Mitzah Twin Sammi | |
Richard Schiff | ... | Lenny Goldberg |
Based in a London suburb Mahmud Nasir lives with his pretty wife, Saamiya, and two children, Rashid and Nabi. His son plans to marry Uzma, the step-daughter of Egyptian-born Arshad Al-Masri, a so-called 'Hate Cleric' from Waziristan, Pakistan. Mahmud, who is not exactly a devout Muslim, he drinks alcohol, and does not pray five times, but does agree that he will appease Arshad, without whose approval the marriage cannot take place. Shortly thereafter Mahmud, while going over his recently deceased mother's documents, will find out that he was adopted, his birth parents were Jewish, and his name is actually Solly Shimshillewitz. He conceals this information from his family, and with the help of his neighbor, Leonard Goldberg, tries to understand the Jews, their religion and even locates his birth-father, who is on his death-bed in a nursing home. Mahmud does not know that Arshad has been checking into his background, has videotaped him setting fire to a Jewish cap during a protest, and ... Written by rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com)
I rented The Infidel about 3 hours ago on pay-per-view being expecting a good but misfiring comedy about Jews and Muslims with some fairly obvious humour. However the as ever excellent Omid Jahlili (apologies for any misspellings), and Richard Schiff were the 'odd couple' of this really charming and heart-felt tale which was at times heart-stoppingly funny largely because of the deadpan delivery and wry observational comedy of the two principles. Richard Schiff teachng Omid to say 'oy' before moving on to 'vey' was so funny, but the real heart of the film was the telling of how fragile the racism of religion is and how based it is on misunderstanding, grandstanding, ego and attempting to 'secure the place in one's own community'. If it has a message it's that everyone is prey to their own culture's prejudices even when those prejudices are based on sometimes almost commicaly absurd rubbish,. A true classic. And a perfect selection of leading men.