It’s a testament to actor Richard Jenkins that you don’t get a true sense of what The Visitor is all about for a good twenty minutes. Jenkins, who could be picked out of a lineup easier than he could a phone book, is one of those guys who quietly goes about his business for a couple of decades, pops up in more movies than you’re even aware of and can do just about anything a director asks of him.

And then one day, he gets his own leading role and he attacks it like a guard dog.

His profile his been higher recently, thanks to more mainstream successes like Fun with Dick and Jane and The Kingdom, and he’s never allowed himself to be just a comedic actor or the occasional government heavy. In The Visitor, he plays Walter Vale, a widower and an economics professor who thinks he has something to express through music but eventually realizes that expressing himself through passion alone is just as rewarding.

On a trip from his cloistered Connecticut life into New York City, Walter returns to his apartment, which hasn’t used in years, occupied by two illegal immigrants, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira). Rather than kicking them out in the streets in the dead of night, Walter allows the couple to stay, and perhaps as a storytelling device used by writer-director Thomas McCarthy, he is visibly less suspicious of them than they are of him.

Soon, Walter connects with Tarek, who begins teaching the professor tradition African drumming techniques, which kind of consume Walter’s every waking moment until Tarek is arrested for his illegal status.

The Visitor becomes something slightly different upon Tarek’s incarceration, more of a political axe grinding than a compassionate look at a misunderstood man. McCarthy gets a lot of mileage out of combining these two elements (the look inside an immigration detainment facility is jarring), but it isn’t a perfect marriage.

McCarthy deserves a heap of credit for this, however: The Visitor is nothing like a big budget drama. It’s quiet, asks difficult questions that probably don’t have romanticized or quick-fix answers, and relies on the acting that goes on between the words to drive his film forward. He’s taken chances like this before, with his terrific 2002 film The Station Agent.

Once again, his risky storytelling pays off, thanks to the humanity that’s present in the principal characters, the inhumanity of the major conflict, and the remarkable performance by Richard Jenkins.

The Visitor

Starring Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman and Danai Gurira

Directed by Thomas McCarthy

Rated PG-13

Review by Colin Boyd

April 18, 2008