Underground remains a controversial and wildly ambitious film, one that refuses to be pinned down. It's a never-ending hall of mirrors that reveals more about the audience than the narrative itself.

| Nov 7, 2023

War, hot and cold.

| Jun 30, 2019

Despite Underground's bleak subject matter, it's an invigorating film, bursting with energy.

| Aug 28, 2018

Furiously inventive, overlong, overwrought, battering, mesmerizing, magical. From an outsider's perspective, the massive project of Kusturica's convulsive carnivalesque celebrates the vivacity of the survivor. (His countrymen may know better.)

| Original Score: 9/10 | Feb 2, 2018

A brave attempt to make art out of horror, sense out of chaos.

| Dec 1, 2017

Acknowledged as the Bosnian director Emir Kusturica's masterpiece, Underground is a hallucinogenic comic romp through Yugoslavia's troubled history over 50 years.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 24, 2016

Delirious in its excess, but never less than ferociously intelligent and operatically emotional, Underground represents one of those rare, exhilarating moments when an outsize artistic vision is fueled by an apparently unlimited budget. Not to be missed.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 23, 2014

A triumph of mise en scene mated to a comic vision that keeps topping its own hyperbole.

| Sep 23, 2014

A rich, vibrant, visually spectacular survey of the changes the place has gone through during the past 50 years.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 23, 2014

Kusturica takes us from wacky farce to harrowing grief to lyrical fantasy to bloody horror. To ignore any side of Underground is to do it injustice.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 23, 2014

Underground is a bizarre, often repellent anti-war parable that takes forever to state the obvious but hits some scattered high notes on the way.

| Sep 23, 2014

On balance, Kusturica is sturdier on style than substance.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 18, 2012

Emir Kusturica's epic black comedy about Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1992 is a three-hour steamroller circus that leaves the viewer dazed and exhausted, but mightily impressed.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2009

There's no denying Kusturica's technical virtuosity as he mounts one hectic, large-scale set-piece after another, but in the end it's hard to fathom the exact purpose of this epic allegory.

| Feb 9, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 18, 2005

Brilliant, outrageous filmmaking. Underground is touching, hilarious, and new.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 29, 2004

Kusturica creates memorable characters and puts them in increasingly surreal scenarios, but he's awfully long-winded in the storytelling. Trim an hour off this beast and you've got a masterpiece.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 23, 2004

It's an admirable, interesting wartime satire, but it has a vaguely distasteful feel that makes its 167 minutes a difficult slog.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 19, 2004

Whether you'll share the filmmaker's indulgence of his larger-than-life characters is questionable, but the Fellini-esque wedding feast on a floating island makes for a memorable closing sequence.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 21, 2004

Emir Kusturica's tragic-farce Underground may be the most important film of the last 25 years.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 21, 2003