Becoming the Enemy

Paulie from Goodfellas is not believable as the Shah. Sorvino can be a very good actor, but here he is not, and as a heavy man doesn't even resemble the vain athletic dictator.

Neither is the script believable. It tries to remake the Shah into a noble lovable humanitarian father figure when he was a mass murdered who killed thousands and treated his people with contempt while squandering billions on himself.

Khomeini is rightly shown as himself a killer and fanatic. But there's nothing to show why he was so popular, his charisma as a leader. The lives of average Iranians is absent. Instead we only see wealthy elites at the very top.

Paul Sorvino as the Shah...really? They couldn't find a Middle Eastern actor that even remotely resembled the Shah (and could act better)? I almost turned it off at that point but decided to suffer through the rest to see if it got better (it didn't). There are a lot of extremely talented Middle Eastern actors but unfortunately none of them are in this movie. The casting is poor, the acting is poor, the special effects are poor and the directing is poor. Its too bad because the plot would make for a great film with the right director & actors. This quality of this film is on a par with your average "Lifetime Movie Channel" production. Watching Paul Sorvino as the Shah is worth a laugh though!