The second feature by writer/director Thomas McCarthy begins similarly to his first feature, The Station Agent, with a quiet and slightly downtrodden main character. Richard Jenkins, who is undoubtedly character actor royalty, takes center stage as Walter Vale, a widowed and socially numb college professor. McCarthy sets up a decent enough character drama with Walter attempting to learn the piano in an effort to bring some spark back into his life. It's easy to connect with his sarcasm when he fires his piano teacher for using the same teaching methods she does on children. One expects a string of similarly amusing and small moments to follow. Then Walter ends up in New York to present a paper and things fall apart.

Back for the first time in years to the New York apartment he shared with his wife, Walter is surprised by a beautiful immigrant couple named Tarek and Zainab. They have been duped into renting his apartment by some random guy he has no connection to. Quickly, as the drama unfolds, McCarthy's true intentions come to the surface. Or rather, his true attempts at intentions. This scenario could have worked, but McCarthy proceeds to bite off more than he can chew when the situation escalates into a deportation drama. Tarek and Walter are happily cruising through the subway entrance after an invigorating stint with a drum circle, when Tarek gets arrested by New York's finest. They apparently had nothing better to do than arrest a middle-eastern looking man who got his pant leg caught in a turnstile.

The press release for The Visitor more or less beams that this is a bright and shiny look at a man's journey of self-discovery. But it's really a poorly executed and ill-informed lecture about the incredibly complex immigration debate coated in a thin layer of one-man-trying-to-reinvigorate-self. It gets condescending really quick, and to whom the film is condescending to varies every few minutes. Every time the film moves too deep into the soapbox end McCarthy throws in a plot device to try and convince us it's an actual character drama and not a one-sided rant. The romance that begins to blossom between Walter and Tarek's mother would have worked, but in the middle of the film's grand plans to open our eyes its impact gets swept under the rug. The interpersonal relationships are empty afterthoughts in a film that thinks it's intimate and cleverly revealing a major contemporary political issue.

There's no real observation and dissection of the immigration debate the way a more skilled filmmaker like Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (21 Grams, Babel) or Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, United 93) might achieve. There are too many moments that play like they've been crossed off a checklist. One of the more painfully obvious scenes involves a random soccer mom who radiates patronization as she peruses the assemblage of jewelry Zainab is selling on the street. The woman coos about how lovely the handmade jewelry is, and asks Zainab where she's from in the same manner one would ask "What kind of dog is it?" Through a forced smile, Zainab says she's from Senegal to which the bourgeois woman replies, "Oh, I've been to Cape town." When she leaves, Zainab and her fellow foreign goods-seller laugh. Her pal asks, "How far is Cape town from Senegal?" the answer being over 3,000 miles. Laugh out loud.

It's not difficult to agree that many people in America lack basic geographical knowledge, but the dialogue in this scene and the way it plays out is so paint by numbers that the only reaction it produces is a roll of the eyes. And there are other moments like this throughout the film where McCarthy thinks he's making an observation when he's actually over generalizing and forcing one. He milks the innocent foreigner angle so hard, but it leaves you feeling numb because ultimately Tarek, his mother, and Zainab are like magic leprechauns who appeared just to add color to Walter's colorless American life. They exist to change him, not for themselves. It's also difficult to ignore that the three main foreigners are all very pretty, and all the deportation guards they interact with are overweight, rude, and dronish.

Politics aside, as a film for film's sake it's a boring offering. Jenkins is wasted in what could have been a star-making role. It's not meant to be a showy role, and he pulls off the quiet melancholy and sarcasm in the first part of the film. When he becomes a pseudo crusader, the writing of the film kills any character build up. All of the characters lose what little personality they'd been given and become mere vessels for words that have no real impact. This film will connect with people who think in the same way McCarthy does. It will not accurately inform and it will not persuade. It's ultimately just a little pat on the back to people who already agree with the film's viewpoint. If you don't or if you're more inclined to view the political subject in a more complex manner you will be annoyed and tired by the time the credits roll. Not to mention that as a fan of The Station Agent you will feel cheated out of any emotional connection with the film.