House of Sand and Fog

Adapted from Andre Dubus III’s best-selling novel, this (extremely) slow-paced affair is a well-crafted and suspenseful thriller by mainstream Hollywood standards, though it’s preposterously overcooked and could certainly be accused of taking its time at a whopping 124 minutes. In truth, House of Sand and Fog is chiefly worth seeing (if at all) for a characteristically spellbinding performance from the ever-magnificent Ben Kingsley, much of whose recent work (most notably Sexy Beast) really should have seen the veteran actor showered with Oscars.
For House of Sand and Fog’s purposes, Kingsley plays an exiled Iranian patriarch and one-time army colonel who has just bought a house on the Pacific Ocean, which he intends to tart up and then sell at a profit in pursuit of the American Dream. The house, however, was originally the rightful property of a recovering addict (Jennifer Connelly) and thanks to a bureaucratic cock-up, has now passed into the hands of Colonel Behrani’s family.
A gruelling battle of wills then ensues between the two protagonists, and is complicated still further when Connelly starts fucking a xenophobic cop with maybe half of a brain cell (Ron Eldard). Some of the film’s errors are far too crass to pass without comment, such as when the Iranian family refer to themselves as ‘Arabs’ (no Iranian alive would answer to that description) – but in the main, Kingsley’s magnificent turn, with fine support from Connelly and Shohreh Aghdashloo, does more than enough to keep a hold on the attention. While I wouldn’t urge the world to run out and see it,House of Sand and Fog will reward the patient viewer.

124 mins. Cert 15PG. Opens February 27