The Sarkozy story glistens, snakelike.

| Jun 19, 2013

The dialogue is punchy, but the film lacks visual personality, and the insights into Sarkozy and France as a whole don't cut very deep.

| Mar 7, 2012

"The Conquest" is like a French restaurant that serves small portions of tart appetizers and calls them freedom fries, yet begrudgingly we must salute the gall.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 24, 2012

Sarkozy seems to mean exactly what he says, even when he's lying for his cause, and Podalyds has the skill to demonstrate that.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 26, 2012

The film is a vehement drama and a fitfully amusing snark fest set to Nicola Piovani's jaunty circus music. It winds up only half-succeeding at both.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 5, 2012

"The Conquest," a feature about recent French politics, makes me yearn for a similar American treatment of our own scene.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 5, 2012

"Conquest'' is a seriocomic portrait of naked ambition and a depiction of petty office politics on a national scale. It's a deadpan hoot that lacks the bite it could and arguably should have had.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 15, 2011

Failing to find deeper meaning in their protagonist's crises, they tell the story in a way that will only hold the interest of those who already know it fairly well.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 18, 2011

Durringer has a good sense of pacing, and he keeps the various interlocking machinations reasonably comprehensible even for those of us who aren't experts in French political intrigue.

| Original Score: B | Nov 11, 2011

Watching Sarko steamroll his even-more-unctuous rivals has its pleasures, but how can this outrageous creature of raw ambition also be treated in such sobering terms? The Conquest tries to have it both ways.

| Nov 11, 2011

A lot gets lost in translation in "The Conquest,'' an account of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 rise to the French presidency.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 11, 2011

A smart, involving and strikingly adult drama about Sarkozy's rise to power...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 10, 2011

Only intermittently rises above the tone of an arch, sniping drawing-room comedy peopled with mild caricatures.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 10, 2011

The Conquest offers that familiar thrill of being allowed to peek behind the curtain and see what our leaders are really like...

| Original Score: B | Nov 10, 2011

A drama about the dirty business of gaining power, it needs bared fangs-and more bite.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 8, 2011

Aided by an excellent ensemble cast, director Xavier Durringer and his co-scripter, Patrick Rotman, don't refrain from showing this truly repellent side of Sarko during his rise from minister of justice in 2002 to the highest elected office.

| Nov 8, 2011

Essentially a geeked-out political procedural, the film is never less than wholly watchable.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 5, 2011

It's a well-observed and often funny account of how, in 2007, Sarkozy landed the presidency.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 20, 2011

Neither hatchet job nor hagiography, it entertainingly lifts the lid on a period which changed France's political landscape forever.

| May 19, 2011

A classy, witty portrait of French president Nicolas Sarkozy -- and a very rare example of a political biopic made while the subject is still in power.

| May 19, 2011