N Know Your Enemy, Randy Feldman astutely identifies a thread within our cultural cluelessness as a potentially ripe storytelling premise, then proceeds to convert it into a deeply layered and massively entertaining kidnapping jaunt.
After being flippantly cut off while driving, an aggrieved man of Middle Eastern background stages a home invasion to teach the most caucasian couple ever (Chantal and Daniel!) a cultural lesson in what drives people who aren't necessarily named Chantal and Daniel. His preferred teaching methodology finds his own dissertations taking a back seat to his attempts to elicit confessions of overt racism from our couple. Of course, he's holding a gun as he's leading this workshop, so his is a lesson best learned quickly and in full.
Since the psychological drivers of varying non-white populations aren't much bothered with on the nightly news, Feldman moves in and fills the gap, knocking it out of the park in the process. I know what you're thinking, but don't preemptively dismiss this film on the notion you might be fed a sour meal of moralizing, as the screenwriting here is far too sharp and its writer far too aware to allow our tale to fall into junior varsity, cheeseball traps. Packed with depth and technically executed at an elite level on all fronts (the acting is superb across the board), Know Your Enemy is cerebral-minded suspense for the aware and the ignorant alike.
After being flippantly cut off while driving, an aggrieved man of Middle Eastern background stages a home invasion to teach the most caucasian couple ever (Chantal and Daniel!) a cultural lesson in what drives people who aren't necessarily named Chantal and Daniel. His preferred teaching methodology finds his own dissertations taking a back seat to his attempts to elicit confessions of overt racism from our couple. Of course, he's holding a gun as he's leading this workshop, so his is a lesson best learned quickly and in full.
Since the psychological drivers of varying non-white populations aren't much bothered with on the nightly news, Feldman moves in and fills the gap, knocking it out of the park in the process. I know what you're thinking, but don't preemptively dismiss this film on the notion you might be fed a sour meal of moralizing, as the screenwriting here is far too sharp and its writer far too aware to allow our tale to fall into junior varsity, cheeseball traps. Packed with depth and technically executed at an elite level on all fronts (the acting is superb across the board), Know Your Enemy is cerebral-minded suspense for the aware and the ignorant alike.