Norman Oppenheimer (Richard Gere) lives a lonely life in the margins of New York City power and money. Norman strives to be everyone’s friend, but his incessant networking leads him nowhere. Norman ends up befriending a young but charismatic politician Micha Eshel (Lior Ashkenazi) at a low point in his life. Three years later, the politician becomes an influential world leader. Flush with his newfound feeling of success, Norman attempts to use Eshel’s name to leverage his biggest deal ever: a series of quid pro quo transactions linking the Prime Minister to Norman’s nephew (Michael Sheen), a rabbi (Steve Buscemi), a mogul (Harris Yulin), his assistant (Dan Stevens), and a treasury official from the Ivory Coast. Norman’s kaleidoscopic plans soon go awry, creating the potential for an international catastrophe he must struggle to prevent. The new film by Academy Award® nominated director Joseph Cedar (Footnote) is a comic and compassionate drama of a little man whose downfall is rooted in a human frailty all too easy to forgive—a need to matter.
