In the end, Fernando León de Aranoa’s film suggests that there may not be a lot of daylight between a good boss and a true villain.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 9, 2022

Wickedly warped.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 2, 2022

Whether or not Blanco is able to save his factory, Bardem is able to navigate the narrative missteps surrounding him and ultimately make The Good Boss worth a look.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 2, 2022

Despite some quality craftsmanship, “The Good Boss” ultimately doesn’t pay off. Capitalism should be more fun than this.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 29, 2022

Bardem’s mischievous turn anchors the slickly executed action, but little of substance lingers from the surface dip into corporate life.

| Aug 28, 2022

I like it a lot. It's a very different kind of role for Javier Bardem, not someone we think of in terms of comedy.

| Aug 26, 2022

It’s mesmerizing to watch such a powerful actor underplay so effectively. The more familiar Blanco feels, the more unsettling he becomes.

| Aug 26, 2022

It’s a nearly impossible task, and Bardem is absolutely boss in a role for which he provides the perfect balance.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 26, 2022

The cast is uniformly good, but it’s Bardem’s sly, harried performance that powers this overlong, and more amusing than funny, comedy.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 26, 2022

“The Good Boss” pulls more weight than you’d expect, and Bardem is in charge of the pulling.

| Aug 26, 2022

“The Good Boss” provides prime material for Bardem, who has to maintain a polished veneer even as his character’s mendacity and troubles mount.

| Aug 25, 2022

Once the comedy does kick in, around the 100-minute mark, it does so quite nastily. The movie never quite recovers.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 25, 2022

Bardem gives the kind of stately, anchoring performance that can just about make up for any shortcomings the film might otherwise face.

| Aug 24, 2022

You’ll have to see for yourself in this clever black comedy that jabs at just how unfair the corporate work world is.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 24, 2022

Fernando León de Aranoa’s film, a sour comic drama, is too impressed by simple ironies (the boss’s company, for instance, makes scales — as in the scales of justice).

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 24, 2022

Bardem is one of the few actors who could really carry off this role: Blanco needs to be at once loathsome, reassuring, cosy and yet plausibly seductive -- and the Spanish star fleshes him out with brio and a nicely deceptive middle-age joviality.

| Aug 4, 2022

An impressively slick and slimy performance from Javier Bardem is the standout selling point for this serviceable if (perhaps appropriately?) workaday satire on corporate corruption and alienated capitalism.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 18, 2022

It’s smartly shot and nicely paced by the writer-director Fernando Leon de Aranoa, and occasionally taps into some zany Coen brothers energy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 15, 2022

A little comic work-out for Bardem, but otherwise, it’s unmemorable stuff.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 15, 2022

... For all the bagginess and overly on-the-nose symbolism, it can also display a finely calibrated grasp of farce.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 14, 2022