Caesar Must Die
Adopt Films | Release Date: February 6, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
77
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New York PostFarran Smith NehmeFeb 7, 2013
Such is literature’s power that the cast is more at ease portraying ancient Romans than speaking as versions of themselves. Read full review
100
Portland OregonianGrant ButlerFeb 7, 2013
For a movie with such a brisk pace -- it clocks in at just 76 minutes -- Caesar Must Die has surprising depth, particularly when it comes to the strong performances by the actors, many of them Mafiosi serving time for drug trafficking and murder. Read full review
91
Film.comJordan HoffmanFeb 26, 2013
At 76 minutes, Caesar Must Die is more of an art piece than a thick steak of a feature film, but it maintains a fascinating hum from start to finish. Read full review
91
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerFeb 22, 2013
The ferocity of the performances is inextricable from the men’s real-life criminality. We are baffled, moved, and repulsed – often at the same time – by the elemental spectacle before us. In this metaprison drama, the prison bars are both illusory and unbreakable. Caesar Must Die chronicles an exalted entrapment. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranFeb 21, 2013
Caesar Must Die shows us in the starkest possible terms the electric power of drama to move and touch not only audiences but the actors who bring so much of themselves to their performances. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayFeb 6, 2013
In Caesar Must Die, the characters are both actor and audience, looking at themselves through the lens of a centuries-old fictionalization of history. Read full review
80
Total FilmTom DawsonFeb 22, 2013
“Ever since I discovered art,” laments one participant, “this cell has truly become a prison.” Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternFeb 21, 2013
What works best is what's readily accessible, the startling power of performers who understand the drama all too well. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinFeb 4, 2013
In a scant hour and a quarter it enlarges your notion of what theater and cinema, what art itself, can do — it dissolves every boundary it meets. Read full review
80
NPRBob MondelloFeb 1, 2013
The Taviani brothers, Paolo and Vittorio, have been blurring the line between reality and fiction in their films for six decades. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneFeb 1, 2013
The result feels, like Shakespeare's play, at once ancient and dangerously new. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenMar 14, 2013
Not surprisingly, prison must be the perfect incubator of sadness and anger, because every one of the “performances” is astonishingly vivid. At the extremes of the emotional spectrum, at least, these guys are brilliant. Read full review
75
The PlaylistJessica KiangFeb 9, 2013
The film is undeniably moving at times, and there are moments of metatextual elegance that feel as though they tremble on the brink of genuine insight. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineChris CabinFeb 1, 2013
Deceptively modest on nearly all accounts, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Caesar Must Die employs seemingly minor directorial contrivances to ruminate on a unique quarrel. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisFeb 6, 2013
There’s an elemental, almost primitive quality to the Tavianis’ condensing that, at its most effective, dovetails with the prison’s severely circumscribed material reality, as if the high walls, barred windows and suffocating rooms were manifestations of the characters’ states of mind. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyFeb 5, 2013
This is a looser, grittier film than their work of late, and while it’s more successful in the sequences of bold theatricality than in the faux-cinéma vérité of the surrounding scenes, the mix is nonetheless an interesting one. Read full review
70
Village VoiceNick PinkertonFeb 5, 2013
Almost as much as the play itself, the rehearsals are staged; the inmates learning to act, then, are acting like inmates who are learning to act. This leads to some on-the-nose scenes in which they observe the parallels between the text and their own lives. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 2, 2013
The most powerful thing about the film is the "audition" scene at the beginning in which the prisoners have to introduce themselves in two ways: sorrowingly, and then angrily. It is a brilliant sequence, and the rest of the film doesn't quite match it. Read full review
60
EmpirePatrick PetersFeb 25, 2013
A hit in Berlin, the Taviani siblings' documentary has plenty of wit and punch, although compared to the best of the medium - "Man On Wire," for instance - it sometimes comes off as guileless and clunky. Read full review
40
Time OutKeith UhlichFeb 5, 2013
Though the Tavianis’ intent is clear—to comment on the thin line separating part and performer, as well as on the quite literally liberating powers of art—the meanings rarely emerge with any elegance or resonance. Hardly a dish fit for the gods. Read full review
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