Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: November 5, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
68
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 24 Critic Reviews
Positive:
20
Mixed:
2
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaNov 11, 2010
Client 9 speaks plenty of truth - about politics, power, human nature - even if you don't buy into the hit-job hypothesis. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianStan HallNov 18, 2010
Popping with intrigue, intelligence and colorful New York characters seemingly straight out of a paperback potboiler. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerNov 13, 2010
Tries mightily to make the case that Spitzer was brought down by his political enemies. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanNov 3, 2010
Deepens the saga of New York's former governor and attorney general into the paradoxical morality play it really was. Spitzer, almost three years after he was caught soliciting escorts, comes off as chastened but still regal, like a hawkeyed Jewish Kennedy. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesJan 13, 2011
No simple tabloid recap. Gibney applies himself to two mysteries, neither of which he unravels but both of which make for gripping cinema. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranNov 11, 2010
Made with the on-camera cooperation of Spitzer (though not his wife), it is a sad, disturbing and in some ways tragic tale that in its lurid combination of sex and politics, banal hypocrisy and bare-knuckles power, seems very much an American story of our times. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierNov 5, 2010
Gibney puts mystery back into a story we thought we knew. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttNov 1, 2010
In retelling the still-astonishing story of the political career of Eliot Spitzer, a shooting star whose spectacular crash might forever obscure his accomplishments, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney has all the ingredients for a potboiler: greed, corruption, sex, power, overweening ambition and jaw-dropping hubris. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNov 1, 2010
It's probably easier for an ex-prosecutor known for macho threats to say he got caught screwing than for him to say he got screwed. But folks, he was reamed. Read full review
80
VarietyJohn AndersonNov 1, 2010
For all the information here, Gibney is unusual among investigative documentarians in that he never forgets he's making cinema. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorNov 19, 2010
When Spitzer resigned, they broke out champagne on the stock exchange trading floor. Shame on them. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliNov 18, 2010
Spitzer was undone by his zipper, but as Client 9 makes clear, he was also undone by his refusal - or inability - to make nice with some of the state's most powerful characters. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 12, 2010
At times Client 9 feels frustratingly incomplete. Gibney hints at a conspiracy among Spitzer's enemies but is unable to fully substantiate this thesis. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayNov 11, 2010
Client 9 doesn't make any excuses for Spitzer, who is interviewed extensively in the film and who wisely insists that he alone is responsible for his fate. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasNov 4, 2010
The film rescues the story from tabloid hell, and asks for a saner assessment of a deeply flawed man. Read full review
75
MovielineMichelle OrangeNov 2, 2010
As Gibney and Spitzer are at pains to point out, it's a story as old as Icarus: Man rises to power; man makes enemies; man gets greedy and is undone. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternNov 11, 2010
Say what you will about Eliot Spitzer, he's a marvelous subject for a documentary, and Alex Gibney has made a film worthy of him. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisNov 4, 2010
Those swayed by the argument in Client 9 that some of the rich and powerful whom Mr. Spitzer crusaded against might have exploited his stupidity should find all this enthralling. Others might just remember the hubris. Read full review
70
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonNov 2, 2010
Spitzer, whose tireless efforts to redeem himself led to his cooperation in this doc, receives an entirely sympathetic-yet thoroughly researched-treatment from Gibney. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisNov 11, 2010
Gibney has too much information, too much material, and too many people to shape a mystery or a drama or even a farce out of it all. His movie has elements of all three without ever sustaining one. Read full review
50
SalonAndrew O'HehirNov 5, 2010
If Client 9 plays a lot like a murky, gripping political thriller, it lacks a fully satisfying ending -- or a fully satisfying hero. Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua RothkopfNov 3, 2010
The more substantial material, including Spitzer's feuds with vindictive New York politician Joe Bruno and financier Ken Langone, gets short shrift. Read full review
30
Boxoffice MagazineVadim RizovNov 6, 2010
The case may be plausible, but Gibney's method - a singularly unimaginative trawl through archival footage and listlessly edited talking heads - is life-sapping to watch, and his editorial contributions laughably literal-minded. Read full review
25
New York PostKyle SmithNov 5, 2010
Let us return to reality (all this happened less than three years ago; do documentarians think we don't read the papers?). Read full review
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