Based of a true story about a journalist who gets detained and brutally interrogated in prison for 118 days. The journalist Maziar Bahari was blindfolded and interrogated for 4 months in Evin prison in Iran, while the only distinguishable feature about his captor is the distinct smell of rosewater. An interview and sketch that Maziar did with a journalist on The Daily show was used as evidence that Maziar was a spy and in communication with the American government and the CIA.

The movie presents quite an imbalanced story as a whole. The story building is quite brilliant by starting off from the arrest. It then develops very nicely by backtracking and restarting from London. But then when it reaches the point of the actual imprisonment days, the movie really lacks the suspense and dramatization that it needs to top out that story built. The prison days lacks very much the intensity that prison scenes should have. Even with the blindfold element, the scenes don't really seem intimidating. The Javadi character is depicted with a contradicting nature of being rigid but also kind of afraid of his inmate, even this can be exploited for adequate suspense. The acting overall is quite nice. Gael Garcia Bernal played out smoothly as an Iranian. Dimitri Leonidas, Haluk Bilginer and Kim Bodnia each played their roles well enough to complete the needed story angles.