AllMovie

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jessica Yu offers an unusual look at the simultaneous diversity and commonality of four very different men in this documentary. In Protagonist, Yu recalls the structural format of the ancient Greek playwright Euripides -- whose stories were often marked by human tragedy, the commentary of a chorus of independent observers, and the sudden and unexpected intervention of the divine -- as she chronicles the lives of a thief, a student of martial arts, a preacher who has renounced his past as a homosexual, and a political terrorist. Protagonist was screened in competition as part of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.