The Wedding Guest (2018)

Directed by: Michael Winterbottom | 93 minutes | thriller | Actors: Dev Patel, Radhika Apte, Jim Sarbh, Harish Khanna, Nish Nathwani, Sidhu Manpreet, Meherbaan Singh

Always nice when an actor goes out of his comfort zone and tries something new. Dev Patel can often be seen as a sweet guest, good guy and ideal son-in-law. In ‘The Wedding Guest’ – don’t be fooled by the brave title – he shows a different side of himself. You don’t want to meet the person Patel portrays in this film in real life. Let alone a wedding!

In ‘The Wedding Guest’, Patel takes on the role of a mysterious Brit. This loner travels to Pakistan to attend a wedding. So far, so good. What the wedding guests don’t know is that this guy has a hidden agenda and has no intention of throwing a party. He rents a car and travels to the wedding venue. On the way to the wedding ceremony, the Brit buys duct tape and a gun. Not exactly purchases that you associate with a wedding. The purpose of this antihero is therefore dubious: he wants to kidnap the bride (Radhika Apte).

It’s cool to see Patel as an antihero in a thriller. Director Michael Winterbottom has made a striking and smart decision to cast Patel in the lead role. The friendly appearance of this actor is in stark contrast to his behavior in this film and that makes ‘The Wedding Guest’ a very fine (read unpredictable) film. You should take the word ‘thriller’ with a grain of salt in this case, because in Winterbottom’s vocabulary, an exciting film is primarily a drama film with a few action fragments. The director takes the time to introduce characters and is in no rush. The narration rate is therefore quite low. That will put off fans of ‘Taken’-esque movies.

Fans of Patel and the ever-reliable Winterbottom, however, should not miss this film.