After being exiled from Afghanistan, a former war journalist settles in a small town in Northern California. When he tries to rise above his menial job on a police blotter by covering a local crime, he's drawn into a world of violence.
Sitaru effortlessly balances the demands of the thriller genre with careful characterizations and a sympathetic, never-judgmental look at poverty and crime.
Despite some atmospheric touches, the film doesn't offer much meaningful insight into the struggle of a man trying desperately to assimilate into a new culture.
There's plenty of intelligence and atmosphere in play here - Adam Newport-Berra's fluid, textured cinematography is a standout, and the performances, especially Rains' charismatic portrait of someone scarred yet innocent, are engaging.
More of an interesting thesis than a compelling drama, but it's anchored by Rains' sturdy performance as a man whose open-minded curiosity about his new home disengages his natural wariness, for both better and worse.
Though [Rains is] strong in The Fixer, willing to push his character's initially endearing curiousity into aggressive and stubborn places and show real emotional confusion in a foreign land, the picture is otherwise a mixed bag.
Nothing that follows Burn Country's jarring opening scene, which drops us without warning into an ongoing performance of an avant-garde play, quite lives up to its audacious intensity and strangeness.
