A Common Man (2013)

Wonderful character development!

Such a frustrating disappointment

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The German title of the movie is a bit of a giveaway, so I hope you did not have a chance to look at that or watch it here. But even if it wasn't you will figure out what is going on before most characters in here know what is happening. The rest is morally ambiguous and might not be your taste or might be right up your ally.Whatever the case, Sir Ben Kingsley gives a more than decent performance, though I'm not sure he as a person would agree to what the movie and his character are standing for. But that's just it, it is a movie and therefor should not be seen as anything more than that. Although it might be fair to say that the director might have more goals and messages to send, it's just what the viewer can assume. Maybe he was just trying to make us think about the topic at hand. And that he achieved for sure

I have seen the Bollywood original with Naseeruddin Shah and Anupum Kher at least a dozen times - and loved it every time I saw it. A Comman Man lacks everything the original had working for it except of the gripping plot - which is still the same!! This one simply lacks the energy, the mystery, the great performances, the excellent story-telling on screen and the finesse of film making!! It is just a poor version that fails to connect with you at any level ... The Sri Lankan actors cannot communicate the emotional range needed for this movie and the film maker could not get the under current, tension and passion that were integral for the story to connect with the audience. At the end of the movie - on is just left feeling flat and bored!!

Alright so this film gets a LOT of flak for being bad. Bad film making. Poorly acted. Poor ADR dubbing/editing. A weak script. Low budget. So be it. I'll give it that. Ben Kingsley is an incredibly underrated actor and his performance alone here makes this film worth watching, particularly because of the wasted potential of his villainous character in Iron Man 3 as The Mandarin. I won't spoil what went wrong in that film for those who haven't seen it, suffice to say that if director Shane Black had taken his character seriously, Kingsley's performance in A Common Man would have delivered a diabolically sinister Mandarin the fans were all expecting to see.Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley delivers an uncompromising performance as "The Man" a terrorist who plants five bombs around the city of Columbo, Sri Lanka demanding the release of political prisoners from the D.I.G. (Mister DIG) played by Ben Cross, another underrated British performer, in a suspenseful game of cat and mouse. Unfortunately the usually dependable Ben Cross' performance is hampered by bad dubbing and very melodramatic acting but Kinglsey shines in a role reminiscent of his character of hit-man Don Logan in Sexy Beast.As others have pointed out, there are indeed some audio sync issues as it appears the whole film was ADR'd and lip sync is annoyingly off a little at times (about a frame or two). So it's not the best technically produced film and the acting by the supporting Hindi cast is almost laughably bad at times, but if you want to see Kingsley playing the real Mandarin I suggest you check it out for his performance alone for a glimpse of what could and should have been in Iron Man 3.

Seeing Ben Kingsly and Ben Cross on the cast, made me excited that they came to Sri Lanka to make a movie. I thought given the resources and talent available in the local film industry I expected a very convincing movie, but as most of us were, i was Thoroughly Disappointed. Firstly let me say that the dialog was utter crap. It was so bad, it had me laughing my sides out. The script seemed to meander purposelessly, and the police at the head quarters lacked the urgency you would usually find when a National Security department gets a bomb threat. To make things worse, the acting was just artificial and almost ammature. I doubt Mr Weeraman could ever out-do his terrible performance. This is possibly the lowest Mr Kingsly would ever reach in his career, I look forward to his performance in Iron Man 3.