The Mauritanian

So while Macdonald manages to come up with one of the most impressively brutal cut-to-black endings in recent memory, the rest of this feature cannot hope to match the power of his cast.

The Mauritanian is effective in communicating the overall vibe a movie like this needs: the tension, the claustrophobia, and the increasingly pervasive sense that something is wrong here.

The Mauritanian wants to be a fusion of Papillon and A Few Good Men, but it cannot work out whether it wants to make a purely emotive argument, or engage in a brutal cross-examination of the legal system.

The Mauritanian is a bit of a throwback -- a solid, old-fashioned piece of entertainment, but not a great movie.

Rahim is supplying soul and some interesting shades of gray to this portraiture. He's giving you a person in the middle of what often feels like a broad prestige-drama sketch.

Luckily, "The Mauritanian," directed by Kevin Macdonald, gets one thing very right: Tahar Rahim's masterful central performance.

This powerful film's true story unfolds in a way that digs much deeper than the political issues involved, taking a personal look at the moral imperative to seek the truth.

Foster and Cumberbatch's legal wrangling gives the film the tone of a network procedural series, but the precious few scenes of Rahim as Slahi make things compelling.

Rahim obviously gets a bravura monologue in the film's final moments of unabashed soapboxing, yet Foster ultimately emerges as The Mauritanian's secret weapon.

There is much to appreciate here, but it's the two leads and the intriguing story that make it worth seeking out.