From the New York Times

Here is another rave review from Stephen Holden of the New York Times:

The four men who relate their life stories in “Protagonist,” Jessica Yu’s enthralling documentary exploration of people with obsessive needs for control and self-mastery, are all disillusioned (and extremely articulate) true believers. When they were younger, they were certain they had found the Answer. One embraced terrorism, another crime, a third martial arts and the fourth missionary Christianity as ways of transcending painful, oppressive childhoods that left them with feelings of inadequacy and shame.

Ms. Yu, who won the Oscar for best documentary short in 1997 for “Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien,” states in the production notes for this film that her concept was to find people whose real lives mirrored the “tragedy of the extremist” in Euripides. A character embarks on a journey for valid reasons, only to find himself so embedded in the cause that he becomes the opposite of what he intended and is blind to that fact until “a single moment of dark clarity.”

To this end, the four parallel narratives are interspersed with chapter headings like “Provocation,” “Turning Point,” “Fever” and “Catharsis.” Scenes from the stories are re-enacted by puppets with wooden masks, manipulated by rods on a miniature replica of a classic Greek stage. (The visual design is elegant.) Quotations from Euripides spoken in ancient Greek connect these men with figures in Greek tragedy to suggest that nothing much has changed: now as then, character is destiny.