The Benefactor ultimately doesn't have anything interesting to say about the character other than his surface struggles.

| Jan 7, 2021

At the heart of Andrew Renzi's directorial debut The Benefactor is a kernel of an intriguing character study... Surrounding it is a tangled mass of loose narrative threads, none of which offer any real satisfaction.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 8, 2019

This is an audacious film about narcissism and digging below the surface of the "good time party guy" to see the demons that lie beneath. However, the film's weakness is that it's a singular movie when it needed to be a dual protagonist movie.

| Aug 22, 2018

Well-etched character piece about a high-spirited philanthropist (Richard Gere) with no family...writer/director Andrew Renzi keeps things straightforward and gets terrific performances out of Gere and especially Theo James.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 24, 2017

All three stars are left adrift in a dull drama filled with good intentions and not a whole lot else.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 2, 2017

The only good thing that makes this movie worth seeing it's Gere's performance. [Full review in Spanish]

| Sep 6, 2016

Believe me when I say that not even a single scene in this film works. Gere is terrible here and the plot goes on and on to nowhere. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/10 | Aug 31, 2016

A film that could have been a lot more, like a good comedy or an exciting thriller, but it ends up being absolutely nothing. [Full review in Spanish]

| Aug 30, 2016

Not even Gere's performance is good enough to recommend this terrible movie. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Aug 25, 2016

Everyone, especially Fanning, gives fine performances. But Andrew Renzi, making his feature debut, directs and edits this television-style drama as if it were a Hitchcockian thriller, leading to expectations of a payoff that never arrives.

| May 24, 2016

Presented in a rather unique way, without feeling contrived when doing so.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 1, 2016

Gere is watchable but constrained by a rushed screenplay that never gives us a proper handle on the man. The potentially intriguing character dynamics fail to splutter into life.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 28, 2016

Gere is very good as the larger-than-life Franny but the film is too slight to do his performance justice.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 28, 2016

The Benefactor loses whatever anarchic spark it may have had, leaving us with an increasingly empty symphony of its star's repertoire of heavy breathing, blinking and out-of-context laughing.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 28, 2016

Fanning (criminally underused) and James have so little meat to their roles, they end up as ciphers while Gere has a ball as a drug-addicted tycoon on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 26, 2016

The price of Gere's good looks is his acting skills don't quite match them.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 25, 2016

Renzi provides a platform for Gere to act in barnstorming fashion but can't work out what to do with any of the other characters. They tend just to stand embarrassed on the sidelines as Gere holds forth and steals every scene in which he appears.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 25, 2016

The Benefactor is a character portrait in search of a movie.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 25, 2016

Gere is committed but his character becomes increasingly annoying, with a one-note tortured past, and the script leaves him and his underwritten co-stars stranded with a pat ending.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 25, 2016

The Benefactor is both a bad film and a thoroughly inexplicable one.

| Feb 25, 2016