[While The Last Metro] was more melodramatic, confined to a single theater company and its strategies and deceptions, while Tavernier is more concerned with the entire period of history.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 9, 2003

No one who loves French film (or movies in general) should miss it.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | May 8, 2003

There's an epic here, but you have to put it together yourself.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 28, 2003

Though it runs 163 minutes, Safe Conduct is anything but languorous. It's packed to bursting with incident, and with scores of characters, some fictional, some from history.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 21, 2003

You could love Safe Conduct (Laissez Passer) for being a subtitled French movie that is 170 minutes long. You could hate it for the same reason.

| Original Score: B- | Feb 6, 2003

Tavernier shows us, in more ways than one, that le cin ma de qualit lives on.

| Nov 5, 2002

Unfolds as one of the most politically audacious films of recent decades from any country, but especially from France.

| Oct 23, 2002

Whatever one makes of its political edge, this is beautiful filmmaking from one of French cinema's master craftsmen.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 21, 2002

Alternately frustrating and rewarding.

Full Review | Oct 17, 2002

Crammed with incident, and bristles with passion and energy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 17, 2002

For devotees of French cinema, Safe Conduct is so rich with period minutiae it's like dying and going to celluloid heaven.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 11, 2002

Some episodes work, some don't.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 11, 2002

One of the very best movies ever made about the life of moviemaking.

Full Review | Oct 8, 2002

The heat of the moment prevails. It cooks Conduct in a low, smoky and inviting sizzle.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 8, 2002

Rises and falls on the strength of its individual episodes. Mostly, it rises, though its extreme length ill suits its anecdotal structure (or perhaps vice versa).

| Original Score: 61/100 | Oct 7, 2002

At nearly three hours, the whole of Safe Conduct is less than the sum of its parts.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 5, 2002

It's a clear-eyed portrait of an intensely lived time, filled with nervous energy, moral ambiguity and great uncertainties.

Full Review | Feb 13, 2002