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"Strange and ambling and sad and whimsical … A beautiful and eccentric waking dream about a modern-day Willy Loman played to subtle perfection by America's most beloved and accomplished leading man." – Chicago Sun-Times
If Alan Clay (Tom Hanks) can convince the Saudi Arabian king to buy his new three-dimensional holographic teleconferencing system, the IT specialist is certain that his problems – keeping his ex-wife happy by paying for his daughter's college tuition, most notably – will be solved. But with his high-profile prospective customer always absent whenever they're scheduled to meet, Clay instead spends his time in the Middle East searching, both for his sense of self and for a way forward, as assisted by a smart-talking cab driver (Alexander Black) and a kindly local doctor (Sarita Choudhury).
Trading on Hanks' enduring everyman appeal, A Hologram for the King uses Clay's plight to examine a world defined by downsizing, debt and doing business from a distance – and, though clearly fictional, it proves only faintly removed from reality. Laced with as much insight as absurdity, the end result is equally surreal and bittersweet, infused not only with the wry humour of the Dave Eggers novel on which its based, but with director Tom Tykwer's (Three, MIFF 2011; Run Lola Run, MIFF 1999, Deadly Maria, MIFF 1995) stylised sensibilities.
"Like an international-relations microcosm imagined by the Coen brothers." – Boston Globe
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