Jay, a young British Asian, is hired to kidnap a woman at her wedding. He prepares himself for a trip to Pakistan, using several passports and the clothes on his back. Once he arrives in Pakistan, he travels to Younganabad, switching car rentals every couple hundred of miles and buying equipment he needs, including pistols and duct tape. He arrives at a wedding party, introducing himself as Asif, a university friend of Hassan, the brother of the bride. He scouts the town including the family home in which the wedding party are staying. Later that night, he sneaks into the house and wakes up the bride, Samira, who is lying asleep in bed. After securing Samira’s cooperation at gunpoint, he tapes her mouth shut, secures her hands behind her back with zip-ties and covers her head with a hood. As he leads the bound and gagged hostage from the house, a guard witnesses the kidnapping and tries to intervene. Jay shoots him dead. He then places Samira in the boot of his rental car and proceeds to flee the scene as Samira's family and their friends find the guard dead and Samira missing. Jay eventually removes the duct tape from Samira’s mouth and explains why he kidnapped her. It is revealed that Samira was actually expecting Jay because it turns out that she was in an arranged marriage and she's in love with another man, her Indian boyfriend Deepesh, the man who hired Jay. Jay then gives Samira the choice to continue to Lahore and meet Deepesh or return to her family and arranged marriage. Samira chooses to continue to Lahore with Jay. Samira asks Jay to remove the hood from her head and to untie her hands. At first he refuses, but eventually agrees to remove her restraints. From Lahore they cross the Indo-Pak border to reach Amritsar. Jay purchases 5 burner phones and 10 SIM cards and attempts to reach Deepesh. Samira tells Jay that the number he has for Deepesh is for his UK mobile and that he also has a local number. Jay eventually reaches Deepesh who tells Jay that he is not at the rendezvous in Amritsar and is still in London but reassured him that he will be in India the following day. The kidnapping and killing of the guard makes the international news which causes complications, and Deepesh quickly changes his mind about bringing Samira out. In New Delhi the following day, Deepesh tells Jay to dump Samira back in Pakistan and put everything back as it was. Jay agrees but tells Deepesh he will need a further £20,000. Back at the hotel, Jay tells Samira that Deepesh doesn't want to see her and told Jay to take her back to Pakistan. She tells Jay that she does not want to do this but that she wants to see Deepesh before she does anything else. The next day in Jaipur, Jay meets Deepesh who gives him half of the money for transporting Samira back to Pakistan. Deepesh tells Jay he will have the other half of his money once the job is complete. However Jay tells him that they will not see each other again, so he needs all of his money beforehand. Deepesh tells Jay that he can have the other half of the money the following day. Jay tells Deepesh to make a reservation at a hotel out of town and that he and Samira will meet him and go there together. The next day, Deepesh collects Jay and Samira from town, and the three set off for the hotel in Deepesh's SUV. During the journey, Samira asks if she and Deepesh can speak in private. Jay agrees and tells Deepesh to pull over so he can get out of the vehicle; he continues driving until Jay pulls his pistol on him. Jay asks Deepesh for the balance of his money before exiting the car leaving Samira and Deepesh to talk. From a distance Jay can hear Deepesh and Samira arguing and sees Deepesh turn violent towards Samira. Jay returns to the car and drags Deepesh out of his seat. The pair fight, and while Jay turns back to check on Samira, Deepesh attacks him with a rock. Jay retaliates and ends up killing Deepesh with the rock. Samira starts the SUV, reverses out onto the road, and calls Jay on his phone. She asks if she can trust him to which he replies she cannot, but she chooses to offer him a deal. She and Deepesh were intending to sell a hoard of diamonds stolen from his family vault - forged replacements for which had been left in their place which would not be found to be fake unless sold - and disappear to live off the proceeds. She offers to split the jewels with Jay and they both go their separate ways to which he agrees. Jay leaves Samira with Deepesh's body and leaves to get petrol and supplies to dispose of the body. Upon his return he incinerates Deepesh's body, and the pair head to the hotel to use Deepesh's reservation, with Jay assuming Deepesh's identity. At the hotel they intend to create a diversionary tale that they are travelling to Nepal. Samira and Jay then sell the SUV to a local fence who puts them in touch with a buyer for the jewels. The jeweller refuses to handle the sale of the diamond given that the value of one stone they show him exceeds US$100,000, a value for which he has no buyers. Jay and Samira return to the hotel and spend the night together. The pair then head for Goa where they rent a house for the winter and plan to live there together funded by proceeds of the sale of the diamonds. One morning Jay wakes to find Samira gone. She calls him to tell him that she is sorry that she left but that while she can not, he can go home because no one knows who he is. Jay thanks her for leaving him some money. Samira tells Jay that she will miss him. Samira cuts off the call after Jay tells her that if she needs anything she can call him. The film ends with Samira riding a bus while Jay sits alone in their rented home.
Cast
Dev Patel as Jay
Radhika Apte as Samira
Jim Sarbh as Deepesh
In addition, Harish Khanna plays Nitin, who provides Jay with forged documents in Jaipur.
Production
In November 2017, it was announced Dev Patel had joined the cast of the film, with Michael Winterbottom directing from a screenplay he wrote.
Release
It had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2018. Shortly after, IFC Films acquired distribution rights to the film. It was released in the United States on March 1, 2019.
Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 43% based on 67 reviews, with an average rating of 5.61/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Wedding Guest makes a compelling argument for Dev Patel as an actor worthy of diverse leading roles, even if the movie's less than the sum of its action thriller parts." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100 based on 25 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
