As you would expect Malkovich is at the top of his game and manages to make what most people would consider an ‘unlikeable’ character one where you are actually concerned what happens him. Nota comfortable watch but it is well worth the effort.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 29, 2024

It is Lurie's white privilege that is most disturbing...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 11, 2019

The Nobel Prize laureate's cutting novel of sex and power in post-apartheid South Africa has been brought to the big screen with all of the loneliness and most of the intelligence of the novel intact.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 5, 2018

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2011

If you know the novel, you're likely to feel that something has been lost here; if you don't, you still have the film's monotonous pacing to contend with. Still, Jacobs has directed an intelligent, intriguing drama.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 11, 2009

This chilly film gets surprisingly close to the tone of Coetzee's precise prose.

| Dec 11, 2009

Surprisingly successful adaptation.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 4, 2009

It's an enormously complicated story with great potential for reductive schmaltz, but this is avoided thanks to Anna Maria Monticelli's sharp, sensitive screenplay and superb performances.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 4, 2009

A perfectly cast John Malkovich gives a superb performance in a powerful and intelligent study of a man coming back from the brink.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 4, 2009

It's hard to say what this solid but unadventurous film adds to Coetzee's powerful source material.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 4, 2009

A worthwhile film which is concerned to do the right thing by a modern classic.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 4, 2009

It's a faithful adaptation, but one that's been indifferently shot by director Steve Jacobs, whose blunt technique tends to flatten the book's morose charge. Still, the acting is often excellent.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 4, 2009

This disquieting drama serves as a platform for Malkovich, whose eloquent performance draws you in with great compassion.

Full Review | Dec 4, 2009

Not a comfortable watch... but still powerful and clear-eyed.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 4, 2009

As the last shot lingers, you long to find out what happens next.

| Dec 4, 2009

This is tragic inevitability at one mile per hour, extending into a slow, sunbaked danse macabre the drama's heartbreak and the guilt, anguish and wrath.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 4, 2009

The visionary gravity of J M Coetzee's Booker-winning novel is perhaps untranslatable to the screen, but Steve Jacobs's film is a very creditable try.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 4, 2009

The screen version does not disappoint and features an outstanding performance from John Malkovich.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 4, 2009

So packed with big issues that it sometimes feels like a bit too much. But it's provocative and fascinating, and never offers any easy answers.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 4, 2009

Engaging, powerful and absorbing drama that doesn't offer any easy answers but exerts a tight grip, thanks to a terrific performance by John Malkovich.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 3, 2009