The Reluctant Fundamentalist opens Venice film festival

The film is set in corporate New York and a richly-hued Lahore before and after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

VENICE: Indian director Mira Nair's political thriller "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" wowed audiences in Venice Wednesday with its powerful tale of a young Pakistani man who renounces Wall Street.

Starring Britain's Riz Ahmed as the soulful Changez, the film is based on an award-winning novel by Mohsin Hamid and set in corporate New York and a richly-hued Lahore before and after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

It examines the rise of "fundamentalism" on both sides after the attacks in a story told largely through flashbacks as Ahmed's character and a CIA agent played by Liev Schreiber talk about an American's kidnapping in Lahore.

Changez initially strives for the American dream, rising up the corporate ladder as a cost-slashing executive under the patronage of Kiefer Sutherland as "Jim" – who is not, as might be expected, the gun-toting spook.

But he complains his voice now sounds "tinny and fake" and feels increasingly alienated after 9/11 when he discovers that even his rich girlfriend – Erica, played by Kate Hudson – looks at him as "another man".

Changez's beard grows, his Pakistani accent comes back. The music picks up in a perhaps overdone transition that ends up with Changez back in Lahore as a professor at a university riven with militant anger against America.

For a film so laden with serious intent, there are moments of levity, such as when Changez's young corporate colleagues speak of their ambitions for great wealth and lavish acts of charity at a barbecue in Central Park.

"In 25 years, I'm going to be the dictator of an Islamic republic with nuclear capability," a straight-faced Changez responds when asked his goals.

When he begins dating Erica – the niece of his Wall Street titan boss – he tells her he wants to kidnap her and put a burqa on her.

The shift of mood comes, inevitably, with September 11 and Changez's crooked smile as he watches the Twin Towers collapse – he later confesses to a split second sense of pleasure at watching "arrogance brought low".

The film then shows his colleagues turning increasingly snide. The Venice audience gasped in horror at the humiliations Changez suffers, such as a cavity search at the airport and aggressive interrogations.

Changez's moment of truth comes in Istanbul where, in his role as an executive, he has to shut down a publishing company.

He refuses after a conversation with the publisher, who tells him: "When you determine where you stand, the colour will return to your world."