“A Hologram for the King” — starring Tom Hanks — is based on the novel by Dave Eggers and directed by Tom Tykwer.
Cultures collide when an American businessman (Tom Hanks) is sent to Saudi Arabia to close what he hopes will be the deal of a lifetime. Baffled by local customs and stymied by an opaque bureaucracy, he eventually finds his footing with the help of a wise-cracking taxi driver (Alexander Black) and a beautiful Saudi doctor (Sarita Choudhury).
In recession-ravaged 2010, American businessman Alan Clay (Tom Hanks), broke, depressed and freshly divorced, arrives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to close what he hopes will be the deal of a lifetime. His mission: sell a state-of-the-art holographic teleconferencing system to the Saudi government.
Adrift and alone in an unfamiliar land, Alan befriends taxi driver Yousef (Alexander Black), who chauffeurs him through the desert to the "King's Metropolis of Economy and Trade," a surreal ghost town of vacant skyscrapers and half-completed construction projects. Baffled by the bureaucratic reception he gets at the so-called "Welcome Center," Alan struggles to figure out why his small IT support team is being forced to spend its days in a sweltering tent as it preps for the big presentation. Worse, because of the Saudi way of doing business, he's unclear if the king will ever show up for the long-scheduled meeting.
Back in Jeddah, the stressed-out salesman winds up in the hospital, where he is treated by the beautiful and empathetic Muslim doctor Zahra Hakem (Sarita Shoudhury). As Alan gets to know his new Saudi friends better, cultural barriers break down and he begins to contemplate the possibility of a fresh start in a land where tradition and modernity meet in perplexing ways.
“So good you don’t want to leave! A pleasure from beginning to end!” raves Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Tom Hanks’ performance is pitch-perfect!” says Sheri Linden from the Hollywood Reporter.
“A classic fish-out-of-water tale. The great Tom Hanks is in prime form!” says Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times.