Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Ah, I thought about five minutes after the film ended, so THAT'S why they put a picture of the World Trade Centre attack on the cover! It's not immediately clear why, but I appreciated being allowed by the director to puzzle it out on my own. I suspect that's the whole point of this film?There's almost no mention of 9/11 in 'Sorry Haters', a fact that I appreciate, because I watch movies for the drama and not for the cold, hard facts. But in the tradition of all great dramas, the makers of 'Sorry Haters' have managed to make a total fiction tell us some hard truths about 9/11.This story is one big metaphor for the dynamics between the West and Middle East. The West is embodied by Phoebe and the Middle East, by Ashade. On the one hand, Phoebe goes out of her way to stir sh*t because she's brimming with inner tension. It turns out that she probably got this way from a lifetime of being casually tormented by people around her who got what she wanted to get, but was too 'civil' to fight for. Even Phoebe's so called best friend snipes, "I wasn't an accountant, I was even WORSE: a sales rep!" (Oh how nice Philly, you shouldn't have!) The hyper-successful and outgoing Philly practically oozes a constant stream of subtle insults like this, all meant to put Phoebe in her place. Whether she's doing it consciously or not is another question. It's obviously a very ingrained habit, though. Having been forced to compete brutally with her peers, and even her best friend, Phoebe seemingly doesn't know how to stop until she's clawed her way to the top of some sh*t pile, somewhere in the city. And she's willing to go to desperate measures to do that. It looks like all that competitive spirit has wiped out any trace of sympathy or humanity in her. It's The American Dream gone oh-so wrong... as it increasingly tends to do, these days. I kept asking myself throughout the film why Phoebe was so bonkers: it was her single minded obsession with, 'I want what she has'. It does make you ask questions about how much you really need any of the things you want.There's a pretty clear connection between the rise of Islamic terrorism and the invasions of the Middle Eastern by Russia, the U.S., U.K and France over the last few decades. Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq were once more progressive places than they are… before the West started to get antsy about how much oil they were sitting on (or near). Every time we withdraw our troops, having failed, yet another chunk of Middle Eastern progress crumbles away for good. And the likes of ISIL and the Taliban spring up to funnel people's anger and pain into fundamentalism or civil war. Or terrorism. Of course, the problem could be solved (or at least lessened) if the West would just STOP messing about in the Middle East, but why do that when the weapons industry's making a killing from it all too...?That's not to excuse terrorism - one attack is as bad as the other - but Western nations do like to play the innocent victim even as they go on doing things that they KNOW will add fuel the terrorists' fire. The western world's compulsion to invade and manipulate the Middle East to enhance its own bank portfolios is very clearly mirrored in Phoebe's compulsion to violate Ashade's personal boundaries. She infiltrates his mind and controls him for the sake of saving her ego. It's insane but she's just like some of the more cutthroat businessmen I've met. She goes to radical extremes because she's bored with her routine, and exists in social isolation. The one-track mind she possesses isn't inherited, it's earned, and the business she works in rewards it. Just like the Western world, Phoebe seems to 'have it all' but having it all's not enough. She's obviously just broken from living in her cut-throat object-obsessed world for so long. Again, the American supermalls full of dead eyed shoppers come to mind. (Sorry Haters might be interesting companion film for Dawn of the Dead or American Psycho for that reason!).I also felt that Phoebe's character was strangely sympathetic... which is a real feat considering her actions. Bravo to Ms. Penn for sustaining that balancing act. Most western people will have felt as enraged about the unfairness of capitalism at some point, so it would have been bad to alienate all those people by making her too 'evil'. Many other actresses would have taken an easier route, but Penn keeps you guessing and wondering whether you should take her side. I agree with the other reviewers who commented that Ashade is a little bit TOO good, though. After all, fundamentalist forms of Islam have always existed and have almost always been quite hostile toward women. It would be silly to dichotomize the Muslims as wonderfully good & pure people, just as it would have been a bit silly to turn Phoebe into a purely heartless killing machine. No one is totally good or evil. So as far as a realistic drama goes, it's a bit of a push... BUT seeing as this is a metaphorical drama, it worked out okay. While the film opens on a city that's clearly still a bit edgy after 9/11, the ensuing tale neatly answers the question of who planted the insane IDEA of 9/11 in the minds of terrorists in the first place. Maybe it was someone like Phoebe who took "my family, my whole world" away from a stranger. Most acts of war and terror are like that, when you think of it - they're all just an externalization of the sound a mind makes when it pops.

This independent movie of an completely (to me at least) unknown director was surprisingly good, reminding me the sophisticated plots and turns in the way we perceive the characters of the early movies of David Mamet. I recommend that you watch it as a a psychological drama, and not as some general commentary about terrorism. The movie starts like an immigrant to American relations drama, with a_ little_too_good_to_be_true Muslim cab driver Abdel Kechiche taking for a night ride alcoholic and frustrated TV producer Robin Wright Penn. We soon find ourselves in the typical immigrant drama, with an actual component, as the brother of the cab driver is a prisoner in Guantanamo, soon to be shipped to Syria where he would be tortured or worse. An soon after we start finding out that all this is a set up for a very different type of drama, a psychological one, where the culprit lies somewhere else, and the impact of terrorism in the day to day life comes from an unexpected place.There are some details in the movie that make the story non-credible, and some of the political touches are too exaggerated. And yet, the quality of Robin Wright Penn's acting, and the delicate balance of the relation in film changing from empathy to stupor and hate and emotion towards the final and brutal twist leaves a very special feeling. Not all corners may be perfect in the story of the film, but there is a level of truth and anxiety about our lives that makes it step ahead of the crowd.

Interesting title, it turns out that "Sorry, Haters" is the title of a TV program that Robin Wright Penn's character Phoebe is associated with producing. The fictional program has wealthy flaunting the products of their wealth.As the movie begins we see her needing a cab ride, and she happens upon Abdel Kechiche as Ashade, a Muslim in NYC. Innocently enough Phoebe has him take her to New Jersey where we see her watching a family from afar, then going up to the new Lexus in the driveway and putting large scratches in it. Then, getting back in the cab and going home.It doesn't stop there, she ends up insinuating herself into his life, going to where he lives, and where he visits the French Canadian wife of his brother who was arrested and deported for the wrong reasons. Phoebe gains Ashade's confidence when she tells him she has connections that will help get his brother free.The movie is one of those where you can't take your eyes away, because you simply never know what is coming next, and most developments are not what you would expect. It helped overall to view the 14 minute DVD extra with Tim Robbins and several others discussing the movie and what they thought it meant.SPOILERS. Another character was Sandra Oh, as the big boss where Phoebe works. In fact, Phoebe misrepresented herself, told Ashade a series of lies, on a rooftop pretended to call a lawyer to get the brother freed. Phoebe has problems, and the one time she felt really useful was on 9:11 when her boss was frightened and asked for comfort. Her whole life now has become to try to recreate that feeling, all the while not caring about anyone else. In the last scene, she and Ashade are going somewhere, they pause at the top of subway stairs, puts something in his pocket saying "my parents gave me this, I want you to have it." Then she pushes him down the stairs, a few seconds later an explosion as she walks away. In a final act of terrorism she tosses her dog into an oncoming truck and walks away. She no longer needed the one thing that was comforting her.

The reason to watch this movie is Robin Wright Penn. I won't bother giving you a summary of the plot, as others have already given sufficient plot summaries. But I will speak on the absolute brilliance of Robin Wright Penn.Penn plays a woman who, in post-9/11 New York, longs to reproduce the feeling she felt on that great day. I'm trying not to come even close to a spoiler here, but let's just say that she has fears, insecurities, and all kinds of issues that make her long for the safety and comfort she experienced on September 11, 2001. This movie does a great job of illustrating how that great and tragic day meant different things to different people. And as crazy as it may sound to some of us, there were actually people (non-terrorists/non "haters of America and the freedom that she stands for") who took some degree of comfort in the chaos and terror of that day. Penn's character is one of those people. And as we come to understand who she is (and who she isn't) we find ourselves feeling a combination of absolute disgust and quiet pity that could only be produced by an actress as talented as Robin Wright Penn. "Sorry Haters" makes you think about September 11, in a way you might never have otherwise considered. It makes you think about American culture and how isolating and lonely it can be. And it also makes you rethink personal responsibility and the culture of victimhood that is so pervasive in our culture today. It accomplishes all of these things through Robin Wright Penn. And I can think of few other American actresses who could have pulled this off.