It is ironical that Sean Penn portrayed a violent psychopath so brilliantly in THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON only the year before (2004, see my review), and that his ex-wife Robert Wright Penn has here portrayed a female equivalent character equally brilliantly. Surely they should have stayed married if they can both psychose so well. Why not do it together rather than in separate films? Oh well, more people would probably get blown up that way. This film has an unfortunate title which is bound to have put everyone off and diminished the audience. After all, how is the public supposed to know that 'Sorry, Haters' is the title of a TV series about rich celebrities made by the company Robin Penn's character works for? OK, so it relates ultimately to this film as well, but that is really carrying subtlety too far, and was certainly counterproductive. This film was written and directed by Jeff Stanzler. Unlike many script writers, he can direct his own work very well indeed. And as for the script and the plot, they are so fantastically ingenious that this ranks as one of the most unexpected thrillers I have ever seen. It is a truly innovative film noir. It is very rare for any one to be clever enough to get such new angles and come up with a story this original in such a well-ploughed genre. There is nothing listed for Stanzler professionally in the five years since he did this. Is he getting his strength back after this harrowing and utterly brilliant shocker? The film twists our preconceptions about current events concerning terrorist atrocities into unrecognisable and novel shapes. The setup of a stooge in this film is just as ingenious as the one portrayed in ARLINGTON ROAD. Robin Penn begins the film as a highly strung and neurotic independent TV producer who takes a taxi. The driver is a devout Muslim who wears a little white hat but speaks fluent English and French. He is a refugee from Syria, and as he takes Penn on an extremely long drive costing about $200, he and she become acquainted. He stops off to see his sister-in-law (played by French actress Elodie Bouchez, see my review of her in PACT OF SILENCE, i.e. LE PACTE DU SILENCE, 2003) and baby niece. He is trying to get his brother released from confinement as a terrorist suspect and Penn offers to get a lawyer to draft an official letter for him about this to the authorities. But countless bizarre events happen, one after another, in bewildering succession, and it turns out that Penn is not a TV producer after all, but merely a lower-level employee of the company, and the office she had appeared to use was that of her old friend Phyllis, brilliantly played by Sandra Oh (who is of Korean extraction). Phyllis's husband and child turn out to be the ones which Penn had told the taxi driver were her own ex-husband and her own child, and this is revealed to be untrue. But that's only the beginning of the surprises. Things get stranger and stranger. It turns out that Penn, who is treated by Phyllis as her best friend, is really a sociopath and psychotic who secretly hates her and wants to harm her (she scratches the paint off her car covertly, for instance). But her moment of truth is when she revels in the fact that the only time Phyllis ever called her and 'was weak' and needed comforting was on the day of 9/11. She says: 'That was the only time I felt I was not just a nobody. I want that day back.' However, I do not want to ruin the surprises by telling any more. Suffice it to say that if you want to stage a terror attack in New York, and you are clever enough to blame it on an innocent Muslim whom you pick up in a taxi, well you might appear in this film. Abdel Kechiche, a Tunisian actor, does a superb job of playing the difficult and complex role of Ashade, the taxi driver. He fully matches the intensity of Robin Penn's performance with his own.
Review of Sorry, Haters
