Maya

A great disappointment. This film follows a moping lost soul of a guy around after (we are supposed to believe, but I didn't) he has been released from a kidnapping in Syria. The women are particularly-poorly drawn, and come across as mere accessories to his hedonistic pseudo-tragic tourism. The only character with any salt is his mother, a former hippy who at least breaks down as she drives away from her reunion with him, giving a hint of the more complex emotions that should be much more present if this was to be believable. The dialog is completely wooden, with diatribes about the destruction of Goa, when this film seems to be just as much a work of Indian travel porn. His relationship with the young girl Maya (practically young enough to be his daughter) is fairly well portrayed, but depressing in that it shows the damage that self-glorious men do without caring. Had it been believable that either of the journalists had actually seen much of the world (let alone endured a kidnapping), this film might have worked but it fell flat from the beginning.