This move has a very strong argument and a nice plot, though it is not exactly a biography movie. The way the sequence was constructed works well most of the time, with flashbacks to her childhood in Somalia.
However, I see one major and one minor pitfall. The minor one is the unnecessary, and apparently random character of Samuel Jackson, the New York's guy that her met at a disco in London and later take huge effort to meet him in New York.
The major pitfall is the unnecessary politicization of some scenes. I have something against movies that "take a stand" or need to explicitly "make a point". This happened twice. One, at her speech at United Nations about her ordeal, she appears very unnatural and what could be the climax of the film is a big let-down with a flurry of clichés about Africa and political correctness (genital mutilation is wrong but I still love my mother and I understood why they do that). Other, when the English caretaker proposes her a convenience fake-marriage under the most lame ever excuse of "my people have done you so much harm so this is the least I can do". Collective guilty at its prime - but only for the English, not for the "pure" Africans who do those mutilations out of tradition or so.
However, I see one major and one minor pitfall. The minor one is the unnecessary, and apparently random character of Samuel Jackson, the New York's guy that her met at a disco in London and later take huge effort to meet him in New York.
The major pitfall is the unnecessary politicization of some scenes. I have something against movies that "take a stand" or need to explicitly "make a point". This happened twice. One, at her speech at United Nations about her ordeal, she appears very unnatural and what could be the climax of the film is a big let-down with a flurry of clichés about Africa and political correctness (genital mutilation is wrong but I still love my mother and I understood why they do that). Other, when the English caretaker proposes her a convenience fake-marriage under the most lame ever excuse of "my people have done you so much harm so this is the least I can do". Collective guilty at its prime - but only for the English, not for the "pure" Africans who do those mutilations out of tradition or so.