Hardships of Non-European Immigrants

 Amreeka Review🌎

Movie: Amreeka

Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Actors: Nisreen Faour, Melkar Muallem, Hiam Abbass, Yussuf Abu-Warda, Joseph Ziegler 

Director: Cherien Dabis

Release Date: 2009

Movie Plot

The plot of 'Amreeka' is amazingly laid out to the audience. The movie starts of in Palestine territory, with Muna (Nisreen Faour) and her son Fadi (Melkar Muallem). They live in Bethlehem and have to go through Israeli checkpoints and face harassment from the soldiers. This is a foreshadowing of what would happen in America. When Muna's visa is accepted, she brings her son and moves in with her family in America. She has difficulties getting there, and when she arrives at the airport, female police with a dog searches her bag and questions her. Due to the conflict in Iraq, bigotry against Arabs in America is at an all-time high. She can't get a good job because of her background. Her son encounters discrimination at school and runs into difficulties as a result of fights with the racist kids. Muna makes an unlikely buddy from a very dissimilar culture to her own. Together will they find out how to solve these problems and overcome hardships?

Movie Review

Four out of five stars were assigned to "Amreeka." The reason I gave it such a good grade is due to a number of different aspects. Racial stereotyping is prevalent throughout the film. When Muna goes out and looks for jobs and is turned down, it makes for a significant sequence in the film. One of the men who interviews her cracks the standard Arab stereotype: "Don't blow the place up." This secondhand embarrassed me. I adore the realistic depictions of uneducated and bigoted individuals. Most importantly, we observe how youth culture functions in the film. On his first day, Fadi has deal with oblivious classmates. We observe how the American educational system largely fails to combat racial stereotypes and even serves to advance them. My favorite section was when Polish Jew Mr. Novatski and Muna become friends. They arranged for this friendship to develop so that it may become romantic. Because several of the movie's sequences were so foreseeably predictable, I didn't award this film the full five stars. I was able to foresee Mr. Novatski's arrival at the recuse and decision to save Fadi with ease. I also anticipated the argument at school, and if you watched the movie carefully, you could easily predict how it would turn out. Overall, I think this movie was great and it really opened up my eyes on how immigrants from the middle east are treated here in America. 

Other Reviews

A review by user cekadah on IMDb gave 'Amreeka' seven out of ten stars. They assert that the storyline and acting in the film are both excellent. They continue by saying the story is too well-known and the result is predictable. I have to concur that everything in this is quite predictable and that the outcomes have been lined up beforehand. In my review, I made some of the same points, so I'm glad someone else did. Overall, this person's evaluation is really useful for maintaining a critical eye on the film and for reminding us not to let what happens to the characters in the film dictate whether we enjoy or dislike it.