Dark Matter (2007)

A Chinese physics graduation student at an American university gets into a conflict with his advisor.

Manipulative account of the experience of foreign students in the USA. For anyone who knows just a little about how the Academia works in the exact sciences area (my case, with emphasis on the "just a little" part) it will be clear that the details of the story fall strictly in the fiction category, notwithstanding its loose inspiration on a real event. And while it is probably true that university professors are prone to having an oversized ego problem my very small experience suggests that this is not as big an issue in the exact sciences area as the film seems to imply. Anyway, the really bothersome aspect of the film is its agenda of demonizing the USA through a deliberate construction of characters and situations which seem to justify the protagonist's insane deeds at the end. The use of the U.S. National Anthem to imply that freedom in the U.S. is illusory eschews the issue which should be discussed instead, namely, how excessive freedom (to buy guns, in this case) is sometimes the real problem.

Rating: 12