In this film, the athlete is a man of wild contradictions: there is Diego, the devoted son, hardworking and insecure; and Maradona, the character he invented to survive, arrogan, bullish, and on a downwards spiral.

| Dec 3, 2022

It's all here: the great games, goals and great scandals. It teems with life and is unlike most biopics about a sports legend. That is, it actually delivers a pungent sense of the atmosphere surrounding him.

| Dec 16, 2020

The tragedy of Maradona is that he was too simple to learn how to play anything other than soccer-and the sins for which he was punished, it turns out, were not really his, but ours.

| Oct 11, 2019

I think [Asif Kapadia] can make anyone interesting... This is almost like the third part of [his] trilogy about what can happen to you with early fame.

| Oct 3, 2019

The Dionysian frenzy of hero worship is well captured by the film, though it could use more footage from the field of play, where Maradona redefined what it means to be fleet of foot.

| Sep 23, 2019

Most documentaries cut frequently to talking heads. Kapadi... doesn't do that, preferring to keep the viewer firmly planted in the narrative he's crafted from hundreds of hours of never-seen archival footage. The approach is hugely effective.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 20, 2019

Director Asif Kapadia, who also made the Ayrton Senna and Amy Winehouse documentaries, lets the familiar story of a gifted kid who follows early success with fame and then tragedy unfold. But he asks us to think about ourselves as well.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 20, 2019

Though a tad overlong at two-hours-plus - even as it condenses its framing to the footballer's 1980s stint in Naples, Italy - Kapadia's handling of Maradona's eventful rise and ignominious decline is a bracing, well-controlled run across a rocky pitch.

| Sep 19, 2019

You don't need to know much about soccer to get caught up in "Diego Maradona," a propulsive archival documentary on the celebrated and infamous Argentine footballer.

| Sep 19, 2019

Asif Kapadia has put together an extraordinarily intimate account of [Diego Maradona's] rise and fall, enriched by grainy but graphic footage recording every phase of his life.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 23, 2019

[Maradona] remains as unknowable as a figure from ancient myth. None of this dents the appeal of a film that makes brilliant use of his terrible, doomed momentum.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 5, 2019

Kapadia has said he wanted to "test" himself by documenting "somebody who is still around". Kapadia has passed his own test.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 16, 2019

We are shown that thin line between adoration and abjection that anyone who lives their life in public must walk, with Maradona turning from god to devil almost in an instant.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 16, 2019

In short, this is gripping and heartbreaking as far as it goes, but it doesn't quite go far enough.

| Jun 13, 2019

We are allowed the "recollections in tranquillity" of a perhaps wiser, sadder Diego. But we're not allowed to watch him grow wiser and sadder.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 12, 2019

Director Asif Kapadia adopts his signature style, rejecting talking heads to create an immersive viewing experience drawn from more than 500 hours of never-before-seen footage.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 12, 2019

Kapadia's approach - using only archive footage, dubbed over with audio interview snippets - is slick and compelling but never probes too deeply.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 21, 2019

It is about his rise and fall, the way celebrity broke him.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 21, 2019

The archival material retains a hypnotic quality, particularly when it comes down to the nuances of Maradona himself.

| Original Score: A- | May 20, 2019

Hero, villain, liar, cheat, champion, scoundrel: this hugely entertaining snorts-and-all biography reveals Maradona to be all these things and more.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 20, 2019