This film is not a joy, and there is no joy in it, but it is powerfully grotesque and it will linger, whether you want it to or not. Give it a go, if you feel brave enough.

| Aug 29, 2018

As played by Alfredo Castro, Ral Peralta is one of the most disturbing and intractably unsympathetic figures in recent cinema.

| Jul 6, 2018

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Larrain's (literally) dark, edgy movie is a precise artistic commentary on Augusto Pinochet's miserable regime, which was 
under way while Travolta gyrated.

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 22, 2009

Larrain evokes the bleakness and oppressiveness of life in a police state with much subtlety even as he poses a much larger question about cultural imperialism.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 20, 2009

Shot with a hand-held camera and presented in a fragmented scenario, Tony Manero is the director's compelling attempt to find parallels between the Pinochet reign of terror and Ral's scruple-less antics.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 3, 2009

A memorably claustrophobic evocation of its time and place, as well as a reminder that the so-called escape offered by pop culture can sometimes be an escape into soul-sucking madness.

| Jul 3, 2009

More than an indelible portrait of a sociopath with the soul of a zombie, Tony Manero is an extremely dark meditation on borrowed cultural identity.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 3, 2009

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 3, 2009

[Director] Larrain deftly employs a Dardennes-style in-the-moment handheld lensing, managing a high-wire act in which audience disgust is outpaced by breathless anticipation.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 1, 2009

Tony Manero has a purposefully murky look and a frantic feel.

| May 12, 2009

Deeply unedifying, but it has some moves.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 17, 2009

Director Pablo Larrain, aided by a quietly compelling performance from co-screenwriter Alfredo Castro as Raul, is clearly commenting not only on a kind of celebrity fetishism.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 17, 2009

This allegory of national failure is down and dirty in every sense.

Full Review | Apr 10, 2009

It's intriguing and challenging, although Castro's Ral never quite comes to full-blooded life, remaining a brittle vessel for the points Larrain seeks to score.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 9, 2009

This tough, impassive, marvellous second feature from young Chilean Pablo Larran exhibits a candour and keen eye for its 'lower depths' milieu worthy of Pasolini at his most austere and non-judgmental.

| Original Score: 4/6 | Apr 9, 2009

The brilliance of Tony Manero is that it is so black-hearted. There are no forgivable souls within miles. The squalor is a masterclass in tack. The ghoulish hook is that it is totally compelling.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 9, 2009

Writer-director Pablo Larran keeps the uneasy laughter coming, and the nervous shocks, as light entertainment. Latin style has its darkest hour.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 9, 2009

A magnificently deranged study of overboard pop-culture fandom and authoritarian rule's destructive effect on its citizenry.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 22, 2008