Salmon Fishing Movie Review

SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN
Starring: Emily Blunt, Ewan McGregor, Kristin Scott Thomas and  Amr Waked
 Directed by Lasse Hallstrom

    "Mad  dogs and Englishmen/go out in the midday sun," wrote British playwrie and composer Noel Coward many years ago. But in the film 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen' the main characters aren't mad, just slightly weird. For they try to implant salmon and salmon fishing in the Arabian country of Yemen. Yemen sits just below Saudi Arabia and is one of the hottest places on earth when the midday sun shines. This is not a salmon friendly place. Think coastal B.C. instead.
     Ewan McGregor plays Dr. Alfred Jones, a Scottish marine scientist whose marriage to an ambitios technocrat is on the rocks or sinking fast, without any hope of being hooked. Then he meets Emily Blunt, playing an assistant to a Yemeni sheik, played by the Egyptian actor Amr Waked.
    Christian Scott Thomas fills an important role as the driven  public relations aide to Britain's Prime Minister. She can be foulmouthed too. "This is your f----ing mother," she shouts to one of her three children when he challenges one of his mother's early morning orders on the way to school. Thomas sends McGregor to Blunt, who then introduces the uptight scientist to the sheik.
    McGregor, like the sheik is a fishing freak. And he's also invented a number of fishing flies to catch salmon. "Faith," the sheik says in effect to the scientist, who doubts that a massive river full of salmon  can be planted in the sun-scorched Yemeni desert. "We need faith Mr. Jones."
    The interaction between the three main characters, the beautiful camera shots of Arabian deserts and British green hills, plus the sometimes comic interludes in British government offices, hinge the picture tog
  ether. So do the few love scenes.
      Of course, there's another Yemen out there too. In the past grinding poverty, civil wars, assasinations and a revolution or two, have killed many Yemenis. Only a small slice of  this Yemen finds its way into this film. We're often shown a dream  Yemen, invented in part by the talented director Lasse Hallstrom and based on Paul Torday's book "Salmon Fishing in Yemen".
    But I enjoyed the movie especiall near film's end, when a huge salmon streaks out from the river into the desert air. For a few moments I thought I was in British Columbia and a sunny coastal B.C. too.
 

   Correction: In the review of the movie 'Bully' I stated that this film was nearly not releases by U.S. censors. This is not true. The censors at first gave the film an R or restricted rating. This would have stopped many teenagers from seeing the film because the documentary contained swear words.
     Thankfully, many young people protested this rating, and the censors then scrapped the restricted rating. So "Bully" can now be seen by young people - which is good.