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Visitor, The
Overture Films


8.1

based on 29 reviews
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based on 29 votes
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MPAA RATING: PG-13 for brief strong language

Starring Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Hiam Abbass, and Maggie Moore

In a world of 6 billion people, it takes only one to change your life. In actor and filmmaker Tom McCarthy's follow-up to his award-winning directorial debut "The Station Agent," we get to know Walter Vale, a disillusioned Connecticut economics professor whose life is transformed by a chance encounter in New York City. Through newfound connections with virtual strangers, Walter is awakened to a new world and a new life. (Overture Films)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Thomas McCarthy
DIRECTED BY:	Thomas McCarthy
RELEASE DATE:	Theatrical: April 11, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	103 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

The Visitor, is, if anything, more imaginative and touching than his first.

100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

As a writer-director, McCarthy, like the characters and the places that he suffuses with emotion, has poetry in him - and he knows how to let it out. He has a talent for demarcating those spaces in which characters can become whoever they want to be.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It works on several levels, and stands out as a wistful meditation on the psychological cost of 9/11.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Eloquent and unassuming, it's a picture that hits home precisely because it doesn't overreach its grasp.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The curious thing about The Visitor is that even as it goes more or less where you think it will, it still manages to surprise you along the way.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A heartfelt human drama that sneaks up and floors you.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

McCarthy's flawless casting may be the film's greatest strength: Veteran character actor Jenkins and his costars vanish into their characters -- their performances are so subtle and unforced that they don't feel like performances at all.

USA Today Claudia Puig

It is one of the year's most intriguing dramas, with a quartet of powerful performances.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Best movie I've seen so far this year? Hands down, it's Tom McCarthy's superb The Visitor, which turns Richard Jenkins, one of the best character actors in the business, into a full-fledged star.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Jenkins and The Visitor”make lovely music together. It’s a case of a veteran character actor slipping on a leading role like the most comfortable pair of pants in the world.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

This is a film of our times - paranoid, heartbroken, disillusioned - and the rare recent American movie whose characters react the way actual people might.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Like few of his filmmaking peers, McCarthy understands and respects the power of quiet, and how a whisper can be as explosive as a shout.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

This audaciously issues-loaded indie drama works, improbably and entirely, on account of the marvelous, often familiar-looking, rarely starring character actor Richard Jenkins and his perfect performance as a stodgy, widowed economics professor.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

A compelling and illuminating story of four people who form an unlikely and momentary friendship of considerable depth.

Variety John Anderson

A combination immigrant/resurrection tale, Visitor tilts toward the soulful rather than the political, and could be this year's humanistic indie hit.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Gives viewers a perceptive, deeply personal take on the timeless immigrant narrative, in which the most epic journey is finally one of self-discovery.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Powerful second film by writer-director Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent).

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

An unassuming but quietly heartbreaking drama.

Empire Anna Smith

The tension dips occasionally but stick with it and you'l be richly rewarded.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The Visitor is a small movie, but its emotions could not be writ any larger.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The combined effect is, as I say, small but sincere. McCarthy may prove to have something bigger in him, or he may be a miniaturist content to build little stories and fill them with all the humanity they can bear. If that's the case, there are far less worthy ways to spend a career.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

At first glance Walter isn't a guy you want to spend two hours with. But by the end of the film, you don't want to see him go. Jenkins is like that: He sneaks up on you and steals your heart with light-fingered skill.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This is a simple story of human drama that provides an incentive to spend a couple of hours in a movie theater during a spring that has not provided many such reasons.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The Visitor tells of renewal through love. Its song is tinged with sadness, but stirring all the same.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Definitely a film that marches to its own drumbeat.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jason McBride

The actor - like everyone else in this tedious yet affecting film - rises well above his soft-headed, solipsistic material, turning in a performance of nuanced delicacy.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Both director and cast exhibit the dedication of those who truly believe in the message at hand. But with so much earnestness onscreen, the message occasionally gets in the way of the movie itself.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

McCarthy is so careful not to take a political stand that his film seems neutered by good intentions. In the spirit of squishy humanism, he soft-pedals a hard-hitting topic.

Village Voice Scott Foundas

McCarthy unquestionably means well, but he's made one of those incredibly naïve movies that gives liberals a bad name, and which does more to regress the sociopolitical discourse than advance it.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 29 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chad S. gave it a9:
Walter Vale(Richard Jenkins) plays the piano, because his late wife played the piano. Quitting the piano; parting ways with the piano itself, in favor of the African drum, living and breathing the drum, as Walter does in "The Visitor", he is saying goodbye to his wife and his bourgeoise lifestyle. Walter's living space is representative of our country, a microcosm. Walter perceives Tarek(Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab(Danai Jekesai Gurira) as intruders when he first encounters the third world couple in his New York apartment. After having second thoughts, he allows them to stay, to be visitors. Soon, Walter and Tarek become fast friends, and soon after Tarek undergoes a Kafkaesque ordeal, Zainab becomes friends with the economics professor, too. For contrast, Zainab, a jewelry-maker, deals with a customer who treats the Senegalese street vendor as if she WAS a visitor. Zainab isn't the visitor; Walter is. That's because Walter doesn't impose a protocol with his new friends. He rides the Staten Island ferry. He escorts Hiam(Mouna Khalil), Tarek's mother, to "The Phantom of the Opera". And most stirringly, he goes underground to perform as a street musician, not to ride the subway. "The Visitor" is a movie about tolerance; tolerance so real, it starts to look like acceptance.

Steve T. gave it a9:
A moving and subtly-told fable about opening one's heart to the beauty of the world. This film will, sadly, be seen by too few people.

Peter B. gave it a9:
I loved it, both funny and touching, staying "real" throughout. I want more and more movies like this, not the crap that Hollywood makes.

Penny N. gave it a10:
Anyone not touched by this film does not have a heart and soul. Including Damon C below...how sad are you. The predictability of your existence is too boring to detail, and a waste of space on metacritic.

Dana M. gave it an8:
A good movie with excellent acting. Very touching story about a man who loses his wife and his passion for living until encountering these touching people and their lives living underground as illegals

Ellen S. gave it a7:
The interesting thing about this film is that just when you think you know where it’s going – at the moment when you’re expecting, say, a moving montage of character growth – the story takes an abrupt turn, and all your assumptions fly out the window. Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is a lonely widower who is pulled from his sadness and mourning by Tarek Khalil (Haaz Sleiman), an upbeat young Syrian living in New York City. Tarek teaches Walter to play the African drum, but just as their odd couple alliance appears to be jelling, the young man is detained by Immigration, and roles shift as Walter becomes the advocate for his young teacher. The film trips lightly along the political questions raised by post 9/11 immigration policy, focusing on the personal aspects of the story. The ending is inconclusive, and this may be troubling, but it is believable and satisfying in a sad sort of way.

Zeke B. gave it a5:
Great acting. Terrible plotting. Implausible situations and behavior. Dull white guy who can't play classical piano blossoms after contact with primitive drumbeats. So far, sort of stereotypical, but the actors are charming.... But then DWG(out of a weakly conveyed mentor/mentee infatuation with the drummer boy)spends lots of money on a lawyer, chucks his job, falls in love with the drummer boy's mom (who is a lovely lonely widow-what luck!) Somehow a moody indy flick becomes an after-school special about immigration. I do not understand these other rave reviews. Ultimately, this is a silly movie.

Visitor, The Overture Films

Visitor, The
Overture Films