The film's opening and closing moments are breathtaking, and amid the gut-punch set pieces are fresh performances from supporting actors that deliver real emotional heft.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 1, 2023

Right from the heart-in-mouth opening, writer-director Saeed Roustayi means business.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 13, 2023

... The journalistic element is rather too laboured, but it’s still of interest. And there are moments of punchy drama along the way.

| Apr 3, 2023

Combines the vérité grit of The French Connection with the physical slapstick of Buster Keaton. Really. It’s a deliberately bewildering cocktail of brutal tragedy and gallows farce that runs throughout this very arresting feature.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 2, 2023

Roustayi directs kinetic action sequences that would see him snapped up by Hollywood but he’s also a master of meaty dialogue scenes set in offices and courtrooms that flesh out the lead characters.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 31, 2023

It’s an exquisitely tense and perfectly played tale of a hardbitten copper, Samad, and his dogged pursuit of the slippery drug lord Naser.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 30, 2023

If Michael Mann made a movie in Iran it might look like this: a ferocious drama-thriller in which a haunted, morally ambiguous cop faces off with a despairing drug lord.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 29, 2023

The film is spectacular but lacks strength and coherence, and furthermore, it introduces a few subplots that stretch an already generous running time. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 27, 2022

... A complex story that is cinematically masterful. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jun 27, 2022

In the end this thriller functions to makes us feel uncomfortable. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 23, 2022

While the plot details do not sound particularly out of the ordinary, it is the way that it all comes together that makes this one of the most exhilarating crime films of the year.

| Aug 21, 2020

The film starts with a chase which would not be amiss in any American thriller, and a search in a slum built entirely out of sewage pipes is a visually jaw-dropping sequence.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 18, 2020

It is a tough crime procedural that becomes a thorny portrayal of corruption and mercy.

| Feb 28, 2020

In a nearly universally excellent film, Navid Mohammadzadeh is a standout, communicating how Nasser is simultaneously a champion of the people and one of their greatest traitors.

| Feb 16, 2020

As breathtaking as anything at your neighborhood multiplex.

| Jan 31, 2020

Mohammadzadeh's performance is the picture's greatest asset. It's just that its shortcomings -- and its 134-minute runtime -- force it to play much rougher than it ought to.

| Jan 17, 2020

Just 6.5 feels hopeless and manic in the same breath. It's timely as hell.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 15, 2019

A riveting, ripped-from-reality thriller that delivers a searing look at a serious problem.

| Nov 7, 2019

A gripping crime thriller that also makes a sharp political statement, Just 6.5 paints a bleak picture of Iranian law enforcement's attempts to deal with the country's flourishing narcotics trade.

| Oct 28, 2019

Just 6.5 is more than a thrilling watch. It is a sobering reflection on the inability of the law to stem the tide of drug addiction through round-ups, arrests and executions.

| Apr 29, 2019