Crimson Gold
Wellspring Media | Release Date: January 16, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
82
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 26 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Iranian director Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold is an anti-blockbuster--a deceptively modest undertaking that brilliantly combines unpretentious humanism and impeccable formal values. Read full review
100
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
It's a troubling, courageous, compulsively watchable work of art. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
This is the first beautiful performance in the year's first great movie. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleJonathan Curiel
An engrossing tale of class differences that reveals tiny details of one man’s descent into hell. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterRichard James Havis
A flawlessly executed character study. Read full review
90
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Provides one of the rare glimpses of the upper class to come out of recent Iranian cinema--the last one in memory was 1996's exquisite, Ibsen-esque melodrama "Leila"--and director Jafar Panahi (The Circle) captures it vividly through his hero's wounded obsession. Read full review
90
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Kiarostami's brilliantly suggestive script, which is quite unlike anything else he's written and is marred only slightly by one of his obligatory sages turning up gratuitously near the beginning. Read full review
90
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
An extraordinary film in many ways, the least of which is its unorthodox casting. Read full review
90
Dallas ObserverGregory Weinkauf
Not a great film, but a good one. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
A stark, minimalist near-masterpiece about the creation of a murderer in modern Iran. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
As in "Taxi Driver," the protagonist is a damaged war veteran, an invisible man who travels about the city and internalizes its contradictions until he explodes. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
It settles into the typical reflective mode of Iranian films, but something IS happening: A human being is slowly, sullenly, silently approaching his combustion point. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
As with many Iranian films, reality and fiction collide (the lead actor really is a pizza deliveryman), and the moral of the story is a surprisingly blunt critique of the growing inequality of wealth in the slowly Westernizing nation. Read full review
80
VarietyLisa Nesselson
Succeeds as a universal account of frustration applicable to any urban center where the gap between haves and have-nots is tauntingly visible. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesManohla Dargis
Through everyday actions and gestures -- in Hussein's awkward exchanges with other people, in his tender fumbling of his fiancée's purse -- Panahi shows a man for whom life has become increasingly arduous, alien. The filmmaker captures, in other words, what Bresson called "the force in the air before the storm." Read full review
80
L.A. Weekly
The result is the work of a funereal yet darkly funny neorealist, sounding the rallying cry against the inflexible maxim casually delivered by one of his own film's characters. Read full review
80
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Unfolds with a marvelously understated humanism. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
Another excellent example of how Iranian cinema uses deceptively simple techniques to decode devastating truths about human nature. Read full review
75
New York PostJonathan Foreman
Crimson Gold has been likened to an Iranian "Taxi Driver," but it's nothing of the sort, though it is powerful in a quiet, minimalist way. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The success of Crimson Gold depends to an intriguing degree on the performance of its leading actor, a large, phlegmatic man. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
Its characters are no different from the rest of us, in the cluster of their annoyances and kicks, yet utterly removed from us by a system that frowns upon ordinary desire. Jafar Panahi's movie, unsurprisingly, has been outlawed in Iran. Nobody likes a prophet. [19 January 2004, p. 93]
70
The New York TimesDana Stevens
The occasional obviousness of the film's themes is more than balanced by the subtlety of its methods and by the stolid, irreducible individuality of its protagonist, Hussein. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
A fable of money as the root of jealousy, discord, violence, but the film's slippery fascination as sociological exposé is the flip side of its thinness as drama. Read full review
63
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
There's a subtlety to Crimson Gold that deserves applause. Read full review
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