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'The Visitor'

Rating:

JOHN ANDERSON

April 11, 2008

THE VISITOR (PG-13). The "homeless, tempest-tossed" yearning to breathe free don't have to be emigres from oppression in Tom McCarthy's "The Visitor": They can be emotional exiles like Walter Vale, the hero of McCarthy's first film since "The Station Agent," and the boring white man extraordinaire.

A widowed college professor and misanthrope, Walter pays rare visits to his New York City apartment to find that two illegal immigrants - wonderfully played by Haaz Sleiman and Danai Gurira - have been scammed into renting the place. Their plight, and his realization that so much of the city and the country have changed during his emotional expatriation, turn Walter into an African-drumming, civil-rights crusading American Adam, and Richard Jenkins - you know his face if not his name - makes the most of his own liberation from character roles to leading man.

It's a terrific portrayal of a character who looks at life the way immigrants in the harbor must have first looked up at the Statue of Liberty. 1:43 (language). At the Lincoln Plaza, and the Sunshine, Manhattan. Coming later to Huntington's Cinema Arts Centre.