SOURCE: “A Daughter, a Father,” in The New Republic, August 9, 1999, p. 30.

In the following review, Kauffmann examines Parvez, the central character of My Son the Fanatic.

Belatedly, a welcome to My Son the Fanatic (Miramax). It was written by Hanif Kureishi, author of My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, and was directed by Udayan Prasad, Indian-born but raised in England, whose second feature it is. I’ve not seen his first, Brothers in Trouble, but Om Puri, who was in it, plays the leading role in the new picture.

Here Puri is Parvez, Pakistani-born, who has spent twenty-five years as a taxi driver in the northern English city of Bradford. The story opens with a party to toast the engagement of Parvez’s son Farid and the daughter of a very English police inspector. Parvez is delighted; the inspector is not. The engagement doesn’t...