time the movie review

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors.

Now streaming on:

This review was originally published on October 9, 2020 and is being republished for Black Writers Week. 

“Time” is an intriguing title for Garrett Bradley ’s documentary about Sibil Richardson’s 20-year battle to get parole for her incarcerated husband. The titular noun is open to many interpretations: It could stand for the term describing a jail sentence, or the notion that all a prisoner has in a cell is time or, most devastatingly, how the incarcerated person’s life remains in a holding pattern while time carries life’s events forward on the outside. Kids grow up without parents, spouses endure without better halves, and parents grow older without their children bearing witness. Whatever the director’s symbolic intentions for naming the film, this beautiful and haunting documentary reminds us that there’s a human being behind those prison identification numbers, someone who is loved and is missed.

Bradley uses Sibil’s black and white home movies to show the passage of time. The film starts with one of her six children, Raymond, joking about how many girls he’s going to get on the first day of Kindergarten. We also see Sibil kissing her husband, Robert, in their car, a playful moment where he acknowledges the camera recording their affection for posterity. She will eventually become an advocate for the rights of the incarcerated while simultaneously trying to get Robert’s parole granted. Specifically, she hones in on how people of color receive harsher sentences for crimes than their White counterparts. “Our prison is nothing but slavery,” she tells a group who came to hear her speak. “And I am an abolitionist.”

History and current events remind us that, if you’re Black or brown, your reputation must be spotless. If you are arrested, falsely or otherwise, or killed by police, the first thing the news media and law enforcement do is determine how to discredit you so that it appears you got what you deserved. The company you kept, your youthful indiscretions, or even simply just looking like less than a respectable choirboy put you in the position to be more harshly sentenced or vilified. Felons of any race are often shunned upon release, stripped of much of their humanity even though the debt to society has been paid. They can’t vote, and many places will not hire nor rent to them.

If someone were innocent of a crime, and unfairly sentenced, they would also be subjected to this outcome. Sibil and Robert are guilty, however, so they do not automatically earn the outrage that viewers could engage if they were not. But this film isn’t seeking easy outrage; it’s simply enlisting our empathy and concern while documenting the effects of a corrupt system. It also touches on themes of faith and forgiveness, and the difficulties of cutting through the red tape of the judicial process.

“Time” lets us know early on that the Richardsons did the crime. On September 16, 1997, they pulled a heist at a Shreveport credit union. Before this, they ran the city’s first hip-hop clothing store and were well known in the community. With four kids at home and Sibil pregnant with twins, one can only imagine the financial desperation that led to armed robbery. In the state of Louisiana, the crime earns five to ninety-nine years. On June 15, 1999, Sibil took 12 years in a plea deal and was paroled in three-and-a-half. Robert rejected his deal and received an excessive sentence of 60 years without any hope of parole.

Once released, Sibil returns to her children, moves to New Orleans and begins the fight to get her husband re-sentenced. When we first see one of Sibil’s speaking engagements, she tells the audience that she has been on the outside for 15 years. From here, “Time” concerns itself with the most recent attempt at a potential re-sentencing verdict. Sibil wades through much bureaucracy, from having to wait for days while judges sit on reviewing Robert’s case to falling victim to a lawyer who does nothing yet charges $15,000 for his uselessness. Several scenes show Sibil calmly calling clerks and secretaries to get status updates. She seems unflappable, so when she finally loses composure and lashes out, cursing into the void, it’s a powerful, relatable response.

The footage Bradley presents of the family over the years was shot and narrated by Sibil, a visual record she’s been keeping for the man she has loved since she was 16. These documenting images change quickly, in montage and without any timestamp. Eventually, we realize the youngest twin sons, Justus and Freedom, are about to turn 18 and have grown up without knowing their father as a free man. They’re both college students, sharp and motivated. Though Sibil narrates most of the film, Bradley allows Justus to offer his own words for a few scenes. An older brother, Richard, is shown in medical school. With these scenes highlighting growth and resilience, “Time” refuses to be some kind of tragedy porn. Sibil and her brood demand justice, not pity. Her strength carries the film and elevates her sons toward success.

Most of “Time” takes place three weeks before a parole hearing may be scheduled for Robert. But this timeframe doesn’t play as a suspense thriller with tricks that manipulate one’s emotions. We never see Robert in jail, for example. Instead, the details come and go at the pace of real life, to the point where we feel tethered to the Richardsons like kin, each of us eagerly waiting for news to trickle down to us. Joining us is Robert’s mother, a character who spouts the type of wisdom tempered with tough love that any Black son or daughter will immediately recognize. Her attitude throughout is basically “I support you and I’ll pray for you, but y’all know you shouldn’t have done that b.s. in the first place!” As memorable as Sibil is, her mother-in-law steals the movie.

“Time” ends with a scene that will wring maximum tears of joy from the viewer. But those tears are bittersweet because the one currency humans cannot make more of is time. In a preceding sequence that doesn’t feel gimmicky at all, Bradley runs some of Sibil’s home movie footage in reverse, as if somehow dragging the clock backwards to make up for lost time. It’s a noble attempt that evokes an ethereal sense of grace. The crisp, black and white cinematography makes the entire film feel like a poetic ode to perseverance. The Richardsons will never get the years back that they’ve lost, but we’re left with hope that a triumphant future will stem from their reunion.

Now playing in select theaters; available on Amazon Prime on October 16

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

Now playing

Remembering Gene Wilder

Matt zoller seitz.

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

Carol Doda Topless at the Condor

Marya e. gates.

The Long Game

Peter Sobczynski

Film credits.

Time (2020)

Fox Rich as Herself

• Garrett Bradley

Latest blog posts

The Overlook Film Festival 2024 Highlights, Part 1: Fasterpiece Theater, Exhuma, All You Need is Death, Me

What You Do is Who You Are: Irena's Vow Screenwriter Dan Gordon on Telling the Story of a Teenager Who Saved Jews During the Holocaust

Chicago Critics Film Festival Announces Full 2024 Lineup with Sing Sing, Ghostlight, Babes, I Saw the TV Glow, More

Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of Our Managing Editor Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert.com

Review: ‘Time,’ a wrenching story of love and injustice, is one of 2020’s great documentaries

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials .

The opening sequence of “Time,” Garrett Bradley’s haunting, heartrending documentary, is a nearly six-minute masterpiece in miniature. It’s a montage of home-video snippets, shot over several years by Sibil Fox Richardson, who goes by Fox Rich. We first see her aiming the camera at herself and trying to figure out the best angle — the first of many moments in which she’ll gently assert her authorship, framing and reframing her own image. She speaks of her husband, Robert Richardson, who’s in prison, noting she herself was released about a week earlier. Moving on to a happier subject, she announces she’s pregnant with twins, standing up to reveal her gently swollen belly.

Before she can say much more, one of her young sons, Laurence, pops into the frame with a goofy grin — and for the next few minutes the camera is giddily aloft, leaping from one scene to the next, in what almost feels like a single uninterrupted movement. Piano chords flood the soundtrack, and images flood the screen: We see Rich hanging out with her boys at home, splashing about with them in a pool, lecturing them in the car and jostling next to them on a carnival ride. Eventually she addresses the camera again, quietly beaming: “Do you see this smile, Robert?” she whispers. “Do you know how hard I’m gonna be smiling when you come home?”

It’s an intensely intimate sequence, teeming with life, pulsing with joy and yet marked by a powerful, palpable absence. Rich filmed these moments so that her husband could see a little of what he’d missed after his eventual release. Many years later, she turned over her roughly 100-hour trove of material to Bradley, who had already been filming Rich and her six sons (including those now fully grown twins, Freedom and Justus). Bradley and her editor, Gabriel Rhodes, began cutting together the past and present footage and what emerged was a prismatic story of crime and punishment, a critical portrait of the prison system’s many casualties and an 81-minute, two-decades-spanning epic of love, devotion and perseverance.

“Time,” which opens in select theaters this week and begins streaming Oct. 16 on Amazon, is an artful puzzle, a hypnotic game of chronological hopscotch. But as constructed by Bradley, who won a directing prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival , it’s bound by certain formal unities. Despite the clear contrast between the rough-hewn archival video and the sharp, shimmeringly beautiful newer material (shot by Zac Manuel, Justin Zweifach and Nisa East), the entire movie is rendered in black and white. It’s a visual choice that allows both time frames to gently blur while still remaining distinct, even as they are often tied together by the melancholy strains and surging arpeggios of Jamieson Shaw and Edwin Montgomery’s score.

Most of all, perhaps, “Time” is held together by Rich’s remarkable voice — soft and raspy in the older clips, deeper and more declarative in the more recent ones. It’s clear from the outset that she’s a born storyteller. She tells us how she and Robert fell in love as teenagers, married in 1997 and hoped to open a hip-hop clothing store in Shreveport, La. When their plans fell through, they committed a foolish, desperate act and tried to rob a credit union. Rich, who drove the getaway car, received a plea deal and served three-and-a-half years. Robert was convicted and sentenced to 60 years in prison, a staggering sentence for a robbery in which no one was hurt. (The story of Robert’s nephew, who also participated in the crime, goes untold here.)

“Sixty years … of human life,” an older Rich murmurs, with more disbelief than self-pity. By this point her husband has served 20 years of that sentence, and she’s spent a lot of time petitioning for his release, filing appeals and making endless phone calls on his behalf. She’s also given lectures about her family’s experience and the injustices of a carceral state in which Black people are grotesquely overrepresented, which she and others liken to a modern-day reconstitution of slavery. Rich and her children might not be behind bars but as long as Robert is, they are not, in any meaningful sense, free.

And the devastating loss they feel is somehow made more acute, rather than less, by the very real counterpresence of joy, success and fulfillment in their lives. “Time” is a patchwork of moments big and small: We see Freedom speaking in a political science debate, Justus impressing his mom with some of his college French and their older brother Remington graduating from dental school. Most of all, we see Rich gradually (though not always chronologically) coming into her own, whether she’s publicly reckoning with her long-ago crime at church, taping a TV commercial for the car dealership she now runs or speaking publicly about the pain of growing older without her husband — and seeing her boys grow up without their father.

Rich rarely looks more radiant than she does in those speeches, partly because we can see the effect of her words on her listeners — most of them other Black women held rapt by her intensity of feeling — and partly because of the unapologetic glamour with which she’s presented. That glamour suffuses nearly all the recent footage, bringing an intense, almost sacralizing beauty to bear on simple deeds and gestures: a young man ironing a shirt, a woman steeling herself for another dispiriting phone call. Some of these images recur steadily throughout, as if to remind us of the repetition that comes with waiting, the ritualistic despair that seeps into every moment.

The saddest recurring image is a silent God’s-eye view of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which is as close as we get to seeing Robert during his incarceration, apart from the life-sized cardboard cutout of him that graces the Richardsons’ walls. His absence quietly haunts the movie even as it builds toward a moment of such shattering emotional force that the screen can hardly contain it; it all but ruptures the surface of a movie that is already a record in fragments. “Time” can make you weep for a hundred reasons, from joy, pain or recognition, but its wounds and its glories are finally inextricable from one of the paradoxes of moviemaking itself. Cinema can magically compress decades into hours and transform lives into narratives, but what it erects here is ultimately a monument to something irretrievable. Cherish every moment of this movie, because each one stands in for all the others that have been lost.

Rated: PG-13, for some strong language Running time: 1 hour, 21 minutes Playing: Starts Oct. 9 Landmark Hillcrest, San Diego; in limited release where theaters are open; available Oct. 16 on Amazon Prime Video

More to Read

L.A. Times Studios to Host Short Docs FYC Showcase on Dec. 7

Nov. 29, 2023

Review: ‘Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland’ grapples with the Troubles through emotional testimonies

Aug. 28, 2023

Review: Striking unusual notes, Japan’s ‘Love Life’ shows an anguished family grappling with woe

Aug. 25, 2023

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Review: ‘Home Alone’ with fangs, ‘Abigail’ is a comedy that goes violently wrong for kidnappers

Travel & Experiences

Classic film lovers: See James Dean’s apartment and more on new TCM tour at Warner Bros.

April 16, 2024

Entertainment & Arts

Dad of Steel! Henry Cavill expecting first child with Vertigo exec Natalie Viscuso

What ‘Civil War’ gets right and wrong about photojournalism, according to a Pulitzer Prize winner

• Become a Critical Movie Critic
• Movie Review Archives

Movie Review: Time (2020)

• Howard Schumann
• Movie Reviews
• No responses
• --> February 7, 2021

“The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite, That ever I was born to set it right!” — William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5

According to the United States Sentencing Commission, the incarceration rate for blacks in the U.S. is over five times higher than whites. In addition, Black male offenders receive sentences that are on average 19.1 percent longer than whites. In Georgia and Louisiana, the proportion of Blacks serving life sentences without possibility of parole is as high as 73.9 and 73.3 percent, respectively. While these statistics tell a story of racial inequality, what they do not reveal is the human cost on families left behind. Winner of the Sundance Award for Best Director, Garrett Bradley’s (“Cover Me”) stunning documentary, Time , shows the human cost on a Black family in Louisiana coping with the absence of husband and father of six boys, Robert Richardson, sentenced to 60-years in prison for the attempted robbery of a credit union.

Using home videos and archival footage edited by Gabriel Rhodes (“And We Go Green”), the film takes place over a period of 20 years and, as one boy declares, “time is loss . . . time flies.” Describing the film’s title, Bradley says that “Time is abstract. The word itself can elicit many meanings, symbols, and practicalities.” The passage of time in the film, however, as shown in the videos compiled by wife and mother, Sybil Fox Richardson — known as Fox Rich, reflects the boys’ growth from childhood to young adults, an entire life without having ever known what it means to have a father.

Left with empty spaces and a cardboard cutout of their father hanging on the wall, their house is filled with a constant reminder of the missing piece, the empty chair at the table and the space in the passenger’s seat in the family car. The absence of the father, however, did not quell the family’s optimism or their determination to have Robert released from his draconian prison sentence. Even more importantly, it did not diminish the love they felt for each other. As an accomplice, Sybil served only three and one half years as a result of a plea bargain. Although a similar deal was offered to Robert, it was withdrawn and the maximum sentence was imposed, even though it was his first offense and there was no violence involved.

The film, shot in black and white by cinematographers Zac Manuel (“Buckjumping”), Justin Zweifach (“Trial by Media”) and Nisa East (“Holy Denver”), is basically Fox’s story and her growth from a self-doubting and insecure young woman to an eloquent advocate for criminal justice reform. In her 2009 memoir, “The One That Got Away: A True Story of Personal Transformation,” she relates her move to New Orleans to be closer to Robert and her campaigning for prison reform in schools, churches, and community gatherings. We also follow her business career as an owner of a car dealership in New Orleans as well as being a motivational speaker.

Employing a non-linear narrative with numerous flashbacks, Time depicts scenes of childhood in kindergarten where the twins (Freedom and Justus) talk about Freedom’s “student of the month” award, the celebration of birthdays, a visit to an amusement park, and the boys’ development into college students pursuing a professional career. Unlike typical stereotypical images of young black males, the boys are shown as complex human beings with a unique ability to set reachable goals for themselves and articulate their feelings. Set to the poetic score of now 96-year-old Ethiopian nun and pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, the viewer is immersed in the family’s struggle.

According to Bradley, “I wanted the film to feel like a river, and not like a collage, and the music helped reinforce that idea and intention. Describing Guèbrou’s music, Bradley s says “I like how open-ended time can be. Emahoy’s music is radically pointed. She frames her own sense of time; she molds it to her liking.” Though Fox maintains her composure throughout, there is a sense of determination about her, a certainty that she will not quit until she can greet her husband walking out of prison. Her fight is one to make sure the family stays together, even after twenty years of frustration. Some of the footage depicts Fox’s numerous phone calls to the judge’s assistant seeking information which is usually not available.

Fox’s tone is one of restraint and courtesy, yet it is clear that she hides her frustration about the unresponsiveness and insensitivity of the justice system. She is a fighter, however. As Bradley describes it, “I loved the spiritual connection of what it means to be a strong Black woman and to work within and outside of the constraints and parameters that the world gives you. To find yourself and remain an individual and to ensure that there’s nuance in your life within those realities.” Time is not a film only about prison reform but also about the enduring bonds of love, one that grew in strength over the years. As Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott expressed it, “Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.”

Tagged: African Americans , children , court , mother , prison , true story

I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.

Movie Review: Hit the Road (2021) Movie Review: Happening (2021) Movie Review: Playground (2021) Movie Review: The Power of the Dog (2021) Movie Review: After Yang (2021) Movie Review: The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) Movie Review: The Worst Person in the World (2021)

'Movie Review: Time (2020)' has no comments

Privacy Policy | About Us

 |  Log in

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

In time: film review.

Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried star in Andrew Niccol's dystopian film, giving new currency to Benjamin Franklin's infamous quote, "Time is Money."

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

• Share this article on Facebook
• Share this article on Twitter
• Share this article on Flipboard
• Share this article on Email
• Show additional share options
• Share this article on Linkedin
• Share this article on Pinit
• Share this article on Reddit
• Share this article on Tumblr
• Share this article on Whatsapp
• Share this article on Print
• Share this article on Comment

It’s refreshing to see a low-tech major studio science fiction film in this day and age, one in which the only physical manifestation of its futuristic setting is a glowing digital clock emblazened on everyone’s lower arm that offers a running tally on how much time they’ve got to live. As novel and absorbing as In Time is in several respects, however, Andrew Niccol ‘s latest conception of an altered but still recognizable future feels undernourished in other ways that are not as salutary, preventing the film from fulfilling its strong inherent promise. The imperiled-lovers-on-the-run action format with Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried heading an insanely attractive cast should produce decent mid-range box office totals.

Related Stories

'i don't understand you' review: nick kroll and andrew rannells make a winsome couple in entertaining gaycation comedy, ashley tisdale recalls screen-testing for 'mean girls' with blake lively.

PHOTOS: ‘In Time’ Premiere: Red Carpet Arrivals

The Bottom Line A provocative premise and beautiful cast can't entirely conceal the shortcomings of this futuristic lovers-on-the-run sci-fi thriller.

In fact, it is hard to think of another film with such a uniformly striking lineup of actors; when, in the opening minutes, you have to adjust to the fact that Olivia Wilde is playing Timberlake’s mother, you know the casting is skewed in a very particular direction, one dictated by the story’s very premise: At this unspecified moment in what in sure looks like, but is not identified as, Los Angeles, the aging process stops at 25. Giving new currency to the quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin , “Time is money” has literally become the motto of the society. Rather than striving for financial gain, personal ambition is directed entirely at acquiring more time; the “rich” have stored up thousands, even millions of years, while the poor work, borrow or steal to get enough just to make it to tomorrow. But when your arm clock ticks down to zero, you’re a goner.

The specifics of this are inevitably intriguing; a phone call costs you a minute of your life, breakfast in a fancy restaurant runs eight-and-a-half weeks. You can trade time with others just by locking arms but can be robbed the same way. At the outset, ghetto-dwelling Will Salas (Timberlake) is the inadvertent beneficiary of this exchange system. Popping into a bar where the clientele look like models for a mixed photo shoot for Maxim and GQ , Will is eventually bestowed with 100 years by a world-weary 105-year-old ( Matt Bomer ) who sums up the societal inequity of the system by observing that, “For a few to be immortal, many must die.”

VIDEO: ‘In Time’ Director Talks About Casting Justin Timberlake

Devastated at his inability to save his mother with his newfound riches, fueled by the old man’s weighty parting admonition–“Don’t waste my time”–and concerned that having so much time on his arm has made him a marked man, Will escapes from so-called Dayton (downtown L.A. by the concrete river) and makes his way to New Greenwich (Century City to the rest of us), where he shortly ends up in a casino playing for time opposite Philippe Weis ( Vincent Kartheiser ), whose holdings can only be measured in eons; so completely is time on the side of the wealthy that they have truly become the idle rich. Will also eyes Weis’ daughter Sylvia (Seyfried), a spoiled girl constantly surrounded by bodyguards who just might possess a hitherto unstirred rebellious streak.

Before long, Niccol morphs In Time into a yarn that borrows liberally from Robin Hood and Bonnie and Clyde as Will and Sylvia race around determined to steal from the rich and give to the poor. They are pursued not only by “timekeeper” cop Leon ( Cillian Murphy ), who’s spent years enforcing the system while, pointedly, staying alive only on a per diem, but by the menacing “Minute Men”–or, in another filmmaker’s phrase, time bandits—thieves led by a wacko ( Alex Pettyfer ) who enjoys draining his victims of their last remaining seconds.

The film’s themes presciently merge with the “haves/have-nots” disparities behind the current Wall Street occupation and related protests, and the desperate couple-against-the-world set-up has an enduring appeal. Unfortunately, as the film moves along, its brisk pace notwithstanding, too many issues come to weigh against it. As cleverly conceived as it is, the time-for-money substitution leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Other than for Leon and a few flunkies, there are no authority figures visible or alluded to. Who runs the country, the city? Is the rest of the world like this? How did the aging process get halted? Given so remarkable an achievement, why are there no other comparable technological advances? Why are all the cars customized early 1960s Lincoln Continentals, Jags and Cadillacs?

Speaking of the 1960s, one of the film’s most arresting touches it to give Seyfried face-framing hair that’s straight Anna Karina/Brigitte Bardot/Elsa Martinelli circa 1963. It’s a great look for Seyfried, who gets to pout a lot early on before joining forces with the boy from the other side of town. All the same, the couple doesn’t generate much heat, which speaks to a greater shortcoming: As it centers on lovers who throw all caution to the wind to live intensely for a time on behalf of a cause greater than themselves, the story desperately needed to be told with urgency in a free-wheeling, vital, lyrical style with a fatalistic overlay, something achieved in films such as Bonnie and Clyde, Pierrot le fou and Thelma and Louise , for starters. Niccol’s approach is too grounded and prosaic for such a spirit to take hold either with the camera or the actors, who run a lot but never together in a way that conveys their resolute connection. A more exalted, even delirious musical score would also have raised the stakes.

Timberlake capably carries the film but a glint of true rebelliousness, of a slightly unhinged element in his character’s makeup, could have nudged the performance to another level. Seyfried, too, would have benefited from being further pushed. That everyone looks terrific is part of the point, but Murphy is able to provide a welcome suggestion that his character has seen it all and is wearing down, while Kartheiser’s baby-faced visage and amused smile supply an extra layer of delight.

Working within the tight conceptual frame, ace cinematographer Roger Deakins enhances the real Los Angeles locations (including the CAA office building, which serves as Kartheiser’s headquarters) as well as the creations of production designer Alex McDowell and costume designer Colleen Atwood .

THR Newsletters

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Justice smith, dominic sessa join ariana greenblatt in ‘now you see me 3’ (exclusive), ‘the people’s joker’ review: a sharp dc parody delightfully crossed with a trans coming-of-age tale, cj’s miky lee to give usc school of cinematic arts commencement address, babs olusanmokun talks ‘the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare’ and a ‘dune 2’ surprise, dan goozee, renowned walt disney imagineering and movie poster artist, dies at 80, ariana greenblatt joining cast of ‘now you see me 3’.

• Entertainment
• <i>The Zone of Interest</i> Is a Breath-Stopping, Hauntingly Original Holocaust Drama

The Zone of Interest Is a Breath-Stopping, Hauntingly Original Holocaust Drama

T here are movies that confirm your place in the world, pictures that let you know you’re on the right track, capable of resolving any puzzle put before you. And then there are those that make you feel like the tiniest speck in the cosmos, a sentient but tentative being whose learning has just begun. Jonathan Glazer’s breath-stopping picture The Zone of Interest —playing in competition here at the Cannes Film Festival—is the latter kind. Glazer hasn’t made a feature in 10 years. His last was 2013’s Under the Skin , one of the most unnervingly poetic horror films of its decade, and perhaps any. The Zone of Interest is also a horror film, but a very different kind. It’s a movie about the most haunting atrocities of the Holocaust . It’s also a movie about marital companionship, about wanting the best for your children, about following the rules and working hard and feeling that you truly deserve the best in life. It’s about all the things that most people in the world want, entwined with the unspeakable.

At the movie’s center is a dream house built on nightmares. The house belongs to a family—the movie’s opening shows this little group and some family friends, in placid wide shot, lounging by a stream flanked by lush greenery, laughing, talking, drying their pale, damp skin after a swim. Though we can’t get a close look at them, we can see how utterly secure they are in their happiness, as if the sun above had been created just to shine down on them.

The head of this robust little family is Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) whose hard work and loyalty have earned him rich rewards: he’s the commandant of Auschwitz , and he and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) have been granted a fine parcel of land adjacent to the camp. They’ve got an austerely elegant house that meets all their needs, surrounded by a garden of bright flowers for their children to play in. Hedwig proudly shows off the grounds to her visiting mother, waving at the not-quite-high-enough brick partition that separates the property from the camp. “The Jews are over the wall,” she says, as if relaying an inconvenient but not particularly troublesome fact. “We planted more vines at the back to grow and cover it.”

Read more: Ken Burns on His New Documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust

Watching The Zone of Interest, you can see why Glazer puts so much space between one picture and the next. His filmmaking style is lapidary, yet his movies, particularly Under the Skin and this one, never feel fussed-over. Assured and precise, they’re the type of movies that carve their own space—there is nothing else like them. Glazer has no interest in showing us atrocities. The Zone of Interest is possibly the least overtly traumatic film about the Holocaust ever made, yet it’s devastating in the quietest way. The camera watches, mouselike and still, as this little family goes about their daily business, the older kids skipping off to school, Hedwig bustling around the house. Their dialogue is muted, almost as if we shouldn’t be hearing it. Most of it is so mundane we might wonder why we’re eavesdropping, but every so often we pick up a detail that meshes with historical details we know, as when Höss and a colleague discuss a design for a new, improved crematorium, nodding approvingly as they outline its ease of use: “Burn, cool, unload, reload.”

Everything in the Hösses’ house, including their clothing, looks new and fresh. The Zone of Interest doesn’t have that muted, vaguely lived-in look that so many period dramas do, as if everything has been softened by the mists of time. In this movie, we’re living in the now. Höss stands in his garden as a building in the near distance—clearly a crematorium—shoots soft flames into the sky, so offhandedly they look like orange smudges. Sound carries, as if on a zephyr, from the camp to the garden: children and infants crying, beseeching cries of women, gunshots. These are just sounds in the distance, and if they’re startlingly immediate to us, the family doesn’t hear them.

Those problems are all far away, and no concern of theirs. Sometimes we’ll get a glimpse of an image—Höss blowing his nose in the sink, his snot mixed with soot, tiny flecks of human remains; one of the children pawing through his small treasure trove of gold teeth—but Glazer and his cinematographer Lukasz Zal linger on nothing. These miniature flashes of horror show that the evil perpetrated outside is following this family inside, though they’re oblivious to its vibrations—except, maybe, for one of the younger Hösses, a daughter, who appears to be having trouble sleeping, or is perhaps traveling in her sleep. (At one point, she mutters something drowsily to her father about “handing out sugar.”) Twice in the film the action shifts from the Hösses’ world to another one, rendered in a black-and-white negative image, of a little girl picking her way around mounds of dirt. Sometimes she’s nestling small white objects into their soft contours; other times she’s collecting bits of something from these inky masses. These are images with a meaning beyond words, half-chilling, half-comforting.

Glazer adapted The Zone of Interest from a 2014 novel by Martin Amis, who died on May 19, just a day after the movie’s Cannes premiere. He has taken some liberties with the novel, changing its fictionalized characters into people who existed in real life. (German SS Officer Rudolf Höss was Auschwitz’s longest-serving commandant, and was hanged for war crimes in 1947.) And, as he did for Under the Skin, Glazer has enlisted singer, songwriter and composer Mica Levi to furnish a spare score that challenges all we know about movie music. Glazer floats Levi’s hypnotic, droning soundshapes atop the movie’s images; sometimes they’re punctured by shouts or cries that we can can barely hear. And the movie closes with a shardlike piece of music—if you could call it that, and we will—that seems drawn from Hell itself, a blend of stylized howls and shrieks that start out soft and ultimately whirl out like a cyclone. It’s the sound of something you can’t quite put your finger on, and it follows you long after you’ve left the film behind. It’s a fallacy to think we can put history behind us.

More Must-Reads From TIME

• Dua Lipa Manifested All of This
• Exclusive: Google Workers Revolt Over $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel
• Stop Looking for Your Forever Home
• The Sympathizer Counters 50 Years of Hollywood Vietnam War Narratives
• The Bliss of Seeing the Eclipse From Cleveland
• Hormonal Birth Control Doesn’t Deserve Its Bad Reputation
• The Best TV Shows to Watch on Peacock
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

In Theaters and Digital

Time now - movie review.

Sometimes a homecoming can only lead to heartbreak.  This is the truth in the spilled guts of Time Now , which is being released by Dark Star Pictures and Uncork’d Entertainment , and it will leave you trembling.

Jenny ( Eleanor Lambert ) is coming home to Detroit.  Unfortunately, it is not for good reasons.  Her twin brother has died suddenly.  There is a mystery tangled in his death and it languishes  somewhere within his group of friends.  Jenny just knows it.  Unfortunately, the family drama from past scars haunts her every move in this return trip as she begins a search which might be in vain.

But somewhere within this dark urban playground the truth is dangled in front of her.  His death is not what it seems.  Full of shadows and even longer question marks, Time Now is a slow burn of strained family dynamics as the thriller aspect gets less attention in the hunt for the truth.

Jenny’s used to it; however, she’s at a loss of what to do about the latest passing, so she dives in and discovers that she barely knew him at all.  Nothing she's done has been enough.  She knows it and so, too, does her Aunt Joan ( Claudia Black ), who takes her to her brother’s apartment.  It is there where Jenny turns her grief into a sort of solution and attempts to get to know her brother through the remnants that can be found in all the mess.

And it leads to a curious group of friends, who know far more than they are willing to share to an outsider. 

Unfortunately, the mystery in the movie comes second to the daughter and mother relationship which makes Time Now feel a bit slower than it needs to be, especially when Jenny is compelled by her sense of being the oldest to try and solve the mystery surrounding his death.  The drama trumps her sense of duty.

Co-starring Xxavier Polk, Paige Kendrick, Dwele, Sebastian Beacon, Jeannine Thompson, Peter Knox, Aaron Matthew Atkisson, Asher Atkisson, Dominique Alexander , and Ashley Sheri and featuring incredible R&B jams from Dwele, Time Now is subtle in its roll-out which will make some audiences lose interest in the mystery surrounding the death of Jenny’s brother.  The drama isn't hard to ignore, but it is far less involving.

Dark Star Pictures and Uncork’d Entertainment are premiering Time Now , writer/director Spencer King ’s new mystery-thriller starring Eleanor Lambert (daughter of acclaimed actors Diane Lane and Christopher Lambert ) and Claudia Black ( Farscape, The Nevers ), at this year’s Austin Film Festival.  The film will then play theaters and release on On-Demand platforms in North America on the 26th of October.

Half a truth is often one great lie. 

MPAA Rating: Unrated. Runtime: 90 mins Director : Spencer King Writer: Spencer King Cast: Eleanor Lambert; Claudia Black; Xxavier Polk Genre : Thriller Tagline: Half a Truth is Often a Great Lie. Memorable Movie Quote: Theatrical Distributor: Dark Star Pictures and Uncork’d Entertainment Official Site : Release Date : October 26, 2021 DVD/Blu-ray Release Date : Synopsis : Several years after a falling out with her family in Detroit, a young woman returns to the city she grew up in to mourn the sudden death of her twin brother. Upon meeting her brother's eclectic group of friends, stepping into the scene he belonged to, and navigating the urban playground that is Detroit, she soon discovers that his death is not what it seems.

New in Theaters/VOD

New on Home Video

• The Scarecrows Are Alive in Trailer for SCARECROWS
• Christmas is Under Siege in New Trailer for ELVES
• Discover the Krampus Backstory in New Trailer for KRAMPUS ORIGINS
• Death Kiss (2018) - Blu-ray Review
• My Pet Dinosaur (2018) - Movie Review

Movie Trailers

• Trailer Watch - JANE Season 2
• Trailer Watch: DINOSAUR
• Trailer Watch: BLOODLINE KILLER
• Trailer Watch: KIM'S VIDEO
• Trailer Watch - RADIOACTIVE: THE WOMEN OF THREE MILE ISLAND

BADass B-Movies

Movie Reviews

Morbidly Hollywood

• Colorado Street Suicide Bridge
• Death of a Princess - The Story of Grace Kelly's Fatal Car Crash
• Joaquin Phoenix 911 Call - River Phoenix - Viper Room
• Screen Legend Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79
• Suicide and the Hollywood Sign - The Girl Who Jumped from the Hollywood Sign
• The Amityville Horror House
• The Black Dahlia Murder - The Death of Elizabeth Short
• The Death of Actress Jane Russell
• The Death of Brandon Lee
• The Death of Chris Farley
• The Death of Dominique Dunne
• The Death of George Reeves - the Original Superman

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

A journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House. A journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House. A journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.

• Alex Garland
• Kirsten Dunst
• Wagner Moura
• Cailee Spaeny
• 372 User reviews
• 158 Critic reviews
• 75 Metascore
• 1 nomination

• American Soldier (Middle East)

• Checkpoint Soldier

• Hanging Captive
• Commercial Soldier Mike

• Commercial Corporal

• Commercial Soldier #1

• Aid Worker Refugee Camp
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

New and Upcoming Action Movies & Series

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia Alex Garland told a reporter at the premiere that the pairing of California and Texas was, in part, to obfuscate the politics but more importantly, that these two states put aside political differences to challenge an unconstitutional, fascistic and corrupt president who is killing American civilians. He said, "Are you saying extremist politics would always remain more important than a president of this sort? That sounds crazy to me."
• Goofs Windshield is shot during the standoff at winter wonderland. Remainder of the movie it is intact.

Joel : I need a quote.

President : Don't let them kill me.

Joel : Yeah, that'll do.

• Connections Featured in Nerdrotic: Woke Hollywood's Civil WAR? Disney DESTROYS Hasbro - Nerdrotic Nooner 388 with Chris Gore (2023)

User reviews 371

• jeremy-clay59
• Apr 10, 2024
• How long is Civil War? Powered by Alexa
• April 12, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Ngày Tàn Của Đế Quốc
• Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $50,000,000 (estimated)
• $25,712,608
• Apr 14, 2024
• $25,725,165

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 49 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• IMAX 6-Track

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed

Advertisement

Supported by

Critic’s Pick

‘Civil War’ Review: We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us. Again.

In Alex Garland’s tough new movie, a group of journalists led by Kirsten Dunst, as a photographer, travels a United States at war with itself.

• Share full article

‘Civil War’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The writer and director alex garland narrates a sequence from his film..

“My name is Alex Garland and I’m the writer director of ‘Civil War’. So this particular clip is roughly around the halfway point of the movie and it’s these four journalists and they’re trying to get, in a very circuitous route, from New York to DC, and encountering various obstacles on the way. And this is one of those obstacles. What they find themselves stuck in is a battle between two snipers. And they are close to one of the snipers and the other sniper is somewhere unseen, but presumably in a large house that sits over a field and a hill. It’s a surrealist exchange and it’s surrounded by some very surrealist imagery, which is they’re, in broad daylight in broad sunshine, there’s no indication that we’re anywhere near winter in the filming. In fact, you can kind of tell it’s summer. But they’re surrounded by Christmas decorations. And in some ways, the Christmas decorations speak of a country, which is in disrepair, however silly it sounds. If you haven’t put away your Christmas decorations, clearly something isn’t going right.” “What’s going on?” “Someone in that house, they’re stuck. We’re stuck.” “And there’s a bit of imagery. It felt like it hit the right note. But the interesting thing about that imagery was that it was not production designed. We didn’t create it. We actually literally found it. We were driving along and we saw all of these Christmas decorations, basically exactly as they are in the film. They were about 100 yards away, just piled up by the side of the road. And it turned out, it was a guy who’d put on a winter wonderland festival. People had not dug his winter wonderland festival, and he’d gone bankrupt. And he had decided just to leave everything just strewn around on a farmer’s field, who was then absolutely furious. So in a way, there’s a loose parallel, which is the same implication that exists within the film exists within real life.” “You don’t understand a word I say. Yo. What’s over there in that house?” “Someone shooting.” “It’s to do with the fact that when things get extreme, the reasons why things got extreme no longer become relevant and the knife edge of the problem is all that really remains relevant. So it doesn’t actually matter, as it were, in this context, what side they’re fighting for or what the other person’s fighting for. It’s just reduced to a survival.”

By Manohla Dargis

A blunt, gut-twisting work of speculative fiction, “Civil War” opens with the United States at war with itself — literally, not just rhetorically. In Washington, D.C., the president is holed up in the White House; in a spookily depopulated New York, desperate people wait for water rations. It’s the near-future, and rooftop snipers, suicide bombers and wild-eyed randos are in the fight while an opposition faction with a two-star flag called the Western Forces, comprising Texas and California — as I said, this is speculative fiction — is leading the charge against what remains of the federal government. If you’re feeling triggered, you aren’t alone.

It’s mourning again in America, and it’s mesmerizingly, horribly gripping. Filled with bullets, consuming fires and terrific actors like Kirsten Dunst running for cover, the movie is a what-if nightmare stoked by memories of Jan. 6. As in what if the visions of some rioters had been realized, what if the nation was again broken by Civil War, what if the democratic experiment called America had come undone? If that sounds harrowing, you’re right. It’s one thing when a movie taps into childish fears with monsters under the bed; you’re eager to see what happens because you know how it will end (until the sequel). Adult fears are another matter.

In “Civil War,” the British filmmaker Alex Garland explores the unbearable if not the unthinkable, something he likes to do. A pop cultural savant, he made a splashy zeitgeist-ready debut with his 1996 best seller “The Beach,” a novel about a paradise that proves deadly, an evergreen metaphor for life and the basis for a silly film . That things in the world are not what they seem, and are often far worse, is a theme that Garland has continued pursuing in other dark fantasies, first as a screenwriter (“ 28 Days Later ”), and then as a writer-director (“ Ex Machina ”). His résumé is populated with zombies, clones and aliens, though reliably it is his outwardly ordinary characters you need to keep a closer watch on.

By the time “Civil War” opens, the fight has been raging for an undisclosed period yet long enough to have hollowed out cities and people’s faces alike. It’s unclear as to why the war started or who fired the first shot. Garland does scatter some hints; in one ugly scene, a militia type played by a jolting, scarily effective Jesse Plemons asks captives “what kind of American” they are. Yet whatever divisions preceded the conflict are left to your imagination, at least partly because Garland assumes you’ve been paying attention to recent events. Instead, he presents an outwardly and largely post-ideological landscape in which debates over policies, politics and American exceptionalism have been rendered moot by war.

‘Civil War’ Is Designed to Disturb You

One thing that remains familiar amid these ruins is the movie’s old-fashioned faith in journalism. Dunst, who’s sensational, plays Lee, a war photographer who works for Reuters alongside her friend, a reporter, Joel (the charismatic Wagner Moura). They’re in New York when you meet them, milling through a crowd anxiously waiting for water rations next to a protected tanker. It’s a fraught scene; the restless crowd is edging into mob panic, and Lee, camera in hand, is on high alert. As Garland’s own camera and Joel skitter about, Lee carves a path through the chaos, as if she knows exactly where she needs to be — and then a bomb goes off. By the time it does, an aspiring photojournalist, Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), is also in the mix.

The streamlined, insistently intimate story takes shape once Lee, Joel, Jessie and a veteran reporter, Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), pile into a van and head to Washington. Joel and Lee are hoping to interview the president (Nick Offerman), and Sammy and Jessie are riding along largely so that Garland can make the trip more interesting. Sammy serves as a stabilizing force (Henderson fills the van with humanizing warmth), while Jessie plays the eager upstart Lee takes under her resentful wing. It’s a tidily balanced sampling that the actors, with Garland’s banter and via some cozy downtime, turn into flesh-and-blood personalities, people whose vulnerability feeds the escalating tension with each mile.

As the miles and hours pass, Garland adds diversions and hurdles, including a pair of playful colleagues, Tony and Bohai (Nelson Lee and Evan Lai), and some spooky dudes guarding a gas station. Garland shrewdly exploits the tense emptiness of the land, turning strangers into potential threats and pretty country roads into ominously ambiguous byways. Smartly, he also recurrently focuses on Lee’s face, a heartbreakingly hard mask that Dunst lets slip brilliantly. As the journey continues, Garland further sketches in the bigger picture — the dollar is near-worthless, the F.B.I. is gone — but for the most part, he focuses on his travelers and the engulfing violence, the smoke and the tracer fire that they often don’t notice until they do.

Despite some much-needed lulls (for you, for the narrative rhythm), “Civil War” is unremittingly brutal or at least it feels that way. Many contemporary thrillers are far more overtly gruesome than this one, partly because violence is one way unimaginative directors can put a distinctive spin on otherwise interchangeable material: Cue the artful fountains of arterial spray. Part of what makes the carnage here feel incessant and palpably realistic is that Garland, whose visual approach is generally unfussy, doesn’t embellish the violence, turning it into an ornament of his virtuosity. Instead, the violence is direct, at times shockingly casual and unsettling, so much so that its unpleasantness almost comes as a surprise.

If the violence feels more intense than in a typical genre shoot ’em up, it’s also because, I think, with “Civil War,” Garland has made the movie that’s long been workshopped in American political discourse and in mass culture, and which entered wider circulation on Jan. 6. The raw power of Garland’s vision unquestionably owes much to the vivid scenes that beamed across the world that day when rioters, some wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “ MAGA civil war ,” swarmed the Capitol. Even so, watching this movie, I also flashed on other times in which Americans have relitigated the Civil War directly and not, on the screen and in the streets.

Movies have played a role in that relitigation for more than a century, at times grotesquely. Two of the most famous films in history — D.W. Griffith’s 1915 racist epic “The Birth of a Nation” (which became a Ku Klux Klan recruitment tool) and the romantic 1939 melodrama “Gone With the Wind” — are monuments to white supremacy and the myth of the Southern Lost Cause. Both were critical and popular hits. In the decades since, filmmakers have returned to the Civil War era to tell other stories in films like “Glory,” “Lincoln” and “Django Unchained” that in addressing the American past inevitably engage with its present.

There are no lofty or reassuring speeches in “Civil War,” and the movie doesn’t speak to the better angels of our nature the way so many films try to. Hollywood’s longstanding, deeply American imperative for happy endings maintains an iron grip on movies, even in ostensibly independent productions. There’s no such possibility for that in “Civil War.” The very premise of Garland’s movie means that — no matter what happens when or if Lee and the rest reach Washington — a happy ending is impossible, which makes this very tough going. Rarely have I seen a movie that made me so acutely uncomfortable or watched an actor’s face that, like Dunst’s, expressed a nation’s soul-sickness so vividly that it felt like an X-ray.

Civil War Rated R for war violence and mass death. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters.

An earlier version of this review misidentified an organization in the Civil War in the movie. It is the Western Forces, not the Western Front.

How we handle corrections

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times. More about Manohla Dargis

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

Even before his new film “Civil War” was released, the writer-director Alex Garland faced controversy over his vision of a divided America  with Texas and California as allies.

Theda Hammel’s directorial debut, “Stress Positions,” a comedy about millennials weathering the early days of the pandemic , will ask audiences to return to a time that many people would rather forget.

“Fallout,” TV’s latest big-ticket video game adaptation, takes a satirical, self-aware approach to the End Times .

“Sasquatch Sunset” follows the creatures as they go about their lives. We had so many questions. The film’s cast and crew had answers .

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ Review: Henry Cavill Leads a Pack of Inglorious Rogues in Guy Ritchie’s Spirited WWII Coup

The 'Sherlock Holmes' director takes a page from history, bringing his trademark attitude to a bombastic black ops mission that turned the tide against the Nazis.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

• ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ Review: Henry Cavill Leads a Pack of Inglorious Rogues in Guy Ritchie’s Spirited WWII Coup 11 hours ago
• ‘Challengers’ Review: Zendaya and Company Smash the Sports-Movie Mold in Luca Guadagnino’s Tennis Scorcher 4 days ago
• Digging Into the Cannes Lineup, Sight Unseen: Heavy on English Movies and Light on Women 5 days ago

In “ The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare ,” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill authorizes an illicit mission to undermine Hitler’s fleet of German U-boats during World War II. The plan calls for renegades with little respect for the rules, led by a cocky ex-criminal named Gus March-Phillips ( Henry Cavill ), who’s released from prison and called into a top-secret briefing. Oblivious to etiquette, Gus helps himself to a tall glass of Scotch, steals an entire box of cigars and struts over to the desk where a priggish-looking officer sits. Gus swipes his lighter, making a fool of the uptight chap, who identifies himself as “Fleming, Ian Fleming .”

Popular on Variety

All the way back to “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” Ritchie has been jazzing up genre movies (gangster stories, mostly) with crackling dialogue and trick camera moves. While hardly shy on attitude, “Ministry” finds the stylistically aggressive director in a tamer, slightly more traditional mode, featuring relatively conservative repartee (including loads of clunky exposition) and fairly straightforward set-pieces. As a whole, the movie hews to the standard men-on-a-mission formula, joining classics such as “The Guns of Navarone” and “The Dirty Dozen” in assembling a pack of highly skilled — if slightly disreputable — pros to attempt the impossible.

M makes no false claims for what looks like a sacrifice operation. If the men are killed, the British government will deny it. And if they succeed, these heroes shouldn’t expect to be recognized as such. In Ritchie’s telling, the carnage is reward enough. (The details were not declassified until 2016, but now that the facts are known, the script — credited to Ritchie and three others — freely embellishes them.) On the Goodreads site, a four-year-old review correctly predicted, “I think it would make a better movie than a book. Especially the center piece chapters, where the squad manages to steal German ships in a harbor off the coast of Africa.”

That’s a bingo, as this daring scheme drives most of the plot, which involves the five guys sailing down to Fernando Po, a neutral island off the coast of Cameroon, where an Italian cargo ship called the Duchessa d’Aosta is being loaded with Nazi supplies. While Gus’ team travels by sea, two undercover allies — Jewish Mata Hari type Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González) and well-connected black marketeer Heron (Babs Olusanmokun) — take the train. The plan is to meet up on the island, blow up the Duchessa and screw up the Nazis’ ability to reload their U-boats, which controlled the Atlantic and prevented Americans from joining the war.

Ritchie’s approach owes more than a little to Quentin Tarantino, whose “Inglourious Basterds” sets the tone for much of the operation. There are smooth-talking Nazi officers whose charm masks their menace and a bombshell vixen expected to outsmart — and potentially seduce — the worst of them, the sadistic yet cunning Heinrich Luhr (Teuton action star Til Schweiger). The movie relies on a terrific ensemble in nearly all its lead roles, apart from Churchill. Sporting a swollen chest and tightly curled handlebar mustache, Cavill brings a charm all but absent from the stiff secret agent he played in “Argylle,” while Ritchson — between his homoerotic flirting and homicidal flair — seems destined to be the fan favorite.

If anything, this dimension of the plot seems the least developed, seeing as how audiences have grown desensitized to rogue agents disregarding the formalities (and laws) of war. It doesn’t entirely track such a mission might be frowned upon back home, though it does make things slightly more exciting, since the British Navy can’t come to their aid — and in fact, are standing by to arrest and court martial Gus and his cohorts, should they be caught. While cartoonish at times, the behavior on offer here is a long way from the PG-13 exploits of Ian Fleming’s gentleman spy, with his fitted tuxedo and fussy cocktail preferences. Leave it to Ritchie to stir things up.

Reviewed at Regal Sherman Oaks Galleria, Los Angeles, April 13, 2024. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 120 MIN.

• Production: A Lionsgate release of a Black Bear, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Toff Guy production. Producers: Jerry Bruckheimer, Guy Ritchie, Chad Oman, Ivan Atkinson, John Friedberg. Executive producers: Mohammed Al Turki, Dave Caplan, Jason Cloth, Olga Filipuk, Michael Heimler, Eric Johnson, K. Blaine Johnston, Scott LaStaiti, Damien Lewis, Llewellyn Radley, Anders Sandberg, Teddy Schwarzman, Jill Silfen, Paul Tamasy, Christopher Woodrow. Co-producers: Max Keene, Niall Perrett, Alex Sutherland.
• Crew: Director: Guy Ritchie. Screenplay: Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson, Arash Amel & Guy Ritchie, based on the book “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze and Gave Birth to Modern Black Ops” by Damien Lewis. Camera: Ed Wild. Editor: James Herbert. Music: Christopher Benstead.
• With: Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, BabsOlusamokun, Henrique Zaga, Til Schweiger, with Henry Golding, Cary Elwes. (English, German dialogue)

More From Our Brands

The best online mattress brands, tested by our editors, robb report’s napa valley wine club has 3 stellar new reds on the way, caitlin clark smashes another tv record as wnba draft draws 2.45m, be tough on dirt but gentle on your body with the best soaps for sensitive skin, christina applegate: i was asked to join real housewives of beverly hills but ‘i would be the worst housewife’, verify it's you, please log in.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Civil War Link to Civil War
• Monkey Man Link to Monkey Man
• Scoop Link to Scoop

New TV Tonight

• Under the Bridge: Season 1
• The Sympathizer: Season 1
• Conan O'Brien Must Go: Season 1
• Our Living World: Season 1
• The Spiderwick Chronicles: Season 1
• Orlando Bloom: To the Edge: Season 1
• The Circle: Season 6
• Dinner with the Parents: Season 1
• Jane: Season 2

Most Popular TV on RT

• Fallout: Season 1
• Baby Reindeer: Season 1
• Ripley: Season 1
• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• Parasyte: The Grey: Season 1
• Sugar: Season 1
• A Gentleman in Moscow: Season 1
• Franklin: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• The Sympathizer: Season 1 Link to The Sympathizer: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming

30 Most Popular Movies Right Now: What to Watch In Theaters and Streaming

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

Immaculate Director Michael Mohan’s Five Favorite Horror Films

Fallout : What to Expect in Season 2

• Trending on RT
• The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
• Play Movie Trivia

Season 1 – Time

Where to watch, time — season 1.

Buy Time — Season 1 on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

Time 's heavy load can be challenging, but strong writing and a magnificent performance from Sean Bean make for an incredible, thought-provoking watch.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

James Nelson-Joyce

Kadiff Kirwan

Bobby Schofield

Mark Cobden

Jack McMullen

Popular TV on Streaming

Critics reviews, season info.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

The Greatest Hits review – cutesy music romance plays a forgettable tune

Lucy Boynton plays a woman who can travel back in time with the power of a song in a high-concept, low-enjoyment fantasy

I n the often insufferably cutesy romance The Greatest Hits, our heroine travels back in time whenever a song from her past is played, nostalgia acting as a magical, transporting force. While watching the film, we too are pulled back but rather to all of the far superior films we’re inconveniently reminded of, from High Fidelity to Richard Curtis’s similarly high-concept About Time to the ’00s Sundance breakouts (500) Days of Summer and Garden State. It’s a film about the power that great music has in distracting us from the now that instead showcases the power that great films have in distracting us from the lesser ones they inspire.

But even without the many whiffs of familiarity, writer-director Ned Benson’s film would still be hitting a bum note. It’s all too self-consciously disheveled, every band T-shirt looking less like it was found at a gig and more like it was bought at an Urban Outfitters and it’s this slick cleanness that affects both style and story. Harriet (Lucy Boynton) is stuck in a grief spiral after her longtime boyfriend Max (new Superman David Corenswet) dies in a car accident. She’s shifted jobs, become withdrawn and walks around with ear plugs and a giant pair of headphones because it’s not just that certain songs take her mind back to certain moments with him, it’s that they take her entire body as well. If she hears a song that was playing at some point during their relationship, she’s thrown back to that exact moment. Her efforts to save him remain fruitless, though, and so her blessing becomes a curse.

Benson’s debut The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby – an ambitious trilogy of films following the dissolution of a marriage from different perspectives – offered up something tantalising in concept, but he never quite found enough truth or raw emotion to affect us in the way a film about something so difficult really should. We’re in glossier, more heightened territory here, but in a film about grief and how we struggle to course-correct after loss, and there’s also nothing wrenching within, everything too broad and stylised to get to us. The decision to only show Max either in Harriet’s brief journeys back or in fleeting montage means that we never really get to know him as anything but a handsome cipher, and so we’re told to mourn a relationship that means nothing. Her thankless gay bestie tells her “you lost yourself when you lost him,” which means very little when we don’t know who she or he ever was.

Harriet meets someone new – the charming Justin H Min – but their courtship is too twee and artificial as well as dated (at one moment, I said he’d better not be taking her to a silent disco, and he then takes her to a silent disco). It’s the kind of real-people-don’t-act-like-this romance that Min’s last film, Randall Park’s incisive comedy Shortcomings, would have ridiculed. Even the fantastical elements don’t make that much sense, magic with rules that are loose and undefined, leaving us with an eye-roll of an ending we can see from a mile away.

Premiering at SXSW, it moves more like a Sundance film from years prior or one a studio would craft to look like it belonged there, a calculated crowd-pleaser with a cold, synthetic feel. Despite that title, this one’s a miss.

The Greatest Hits is available on Hulu on 12 April in the US and on Disney+ elsewhere

• Romance films
• Drama films
• Science fiction and fantasy films

Most viewed