A few months after 9/11, Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Tahar Rahim) is arrested by the authorities in his country and handed to the American authorities. Years later he is still being held at Guantanamo Bay without charge and civil rights lawyer Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) takes on his case.

The Mauritanian is a really solid and engrossing drama that mostly plays by the rules laid out in true life dramas about miscarriages of justice. Slahi was once a freedom fighter in Afghanistan and had trained with Al Qaeda briefly. Without any other evidence this was enough for America to hold him without charge whilst torturing him for confessions. Slahi keeps his faith that the truth will out though and seems to bear no ill will to his captors, even making conversation with his interrogators and guards. His lawyers, Hollander and Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley) work tirelessly to assist him and we see none of their personal life impinging on this effort, with Hollander even visiting at Christmas one year. With a slight twist in the format the prosecuting attorney , Stuart Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch) is also not actually a villain either. He diligently works through his case and chats cordially with Hollander whilst seeking justice.

Director Kevin McDonald, who is no stranger to bringing real life stories to life takes his time building up Slahi’s humanity. We get to see a complex series of flashbacks weaving back and forth through his life that show us who he was and how he lived before the terror of the torture we all know occurred at Guantanamo is unleashed on screen, giving it more power. The flashbacks and scenes of imprisonment are cleverly earmarked via a change in aspect ratio. Whilst the rest of the film is in a glorious widescreen, Slahi’s imprisonment and life are caged within a 4:3 aspect ratio and feature far more claustrophobic close ups. Whilst Tahar Rahim, probably most famous for portraying a prisoner in 2009’s ‘A Prophet’ is probably the main reason this film works so well. His portrayal of Slahi is sensational across all facets of his life.

I suspect the only negative to the film really is that it never really pushes past the formula it so excellently succeeds at. Yes it is a truly engrossing story that unfurls with precision. But we never really delve deeply into the legal quandaries that Guantanamo posed and still poses. Hollander’s lawyer initially is less interested in Slahi himself and more in the fact that she is defending the constitution from the violation that Guantanamo poses. But the film merely settles with pushing this issue into our purview and no more.

The films final moments where it tells you what happened to Slahi after the film ends is shocking and also life affirming with Bob Dylan’s “The Man In Me” getting treated to a film outing that might even top its appearance in The Big Lebowski.