Ian Olds made the documentary Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi. It showed the working relationship between journalist Christian Parenti and his Afghan colleague Ajmal Naqshbandi during the Afghan War. Naqshbandi was killed by the Taliban.
In this feature film, Osman (Dominic Rains) is a fixer/interpreter to an American journalist now living in rural northern California having been granted asylum status.
Osman lives with the mother of his American journalist friend who obviously loves the thrill of being a war reporter. His mom Gloria (Melissa Leo) is a cop and Osman is very much a surrogate son to her.
Osman needs to fit in, he gets a low paid job as a crime reporter and is very much a fish out of water as he encounters the low life in the town, not far from being hillbillies. One of them is Lindsay (James Franco) who when sober can construct the best hot tubs but disappears and might have killed someone.
Osman also meets some hippy types who treat him nice but underneath there might also be tension as they test his masculinity being a displaced person.
The story was weak and far fetched. There is a film to be told of an Afghan asylum seeker trying to fit in his host country. Here Osman covers up for Lindsay a man he hardly knows and who beat him up when they first met. He then later gets in a fight with some gangster types. The plot just stretched credibility.
