Heartbeat Detector
New Yorker Films | Release Date: March 14, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
68
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 9 Critic Reviews
Positive:
6
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
It's a thin line between 20th-century Nazism and 21st-century corporate culture in Heartbeat Detector, Nicolas Klotz's rewardingly chilly psychological thriller. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
Amalric gives another in a recent string of riveting performances, and Klotz gets a lot of play out of the ironic distance between musical expression and corporate rigor. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
A rich, vexing experience. Read full review
70
VarietyLisa Nesselson
Both pertinent and discomfiting, this sober, well-cast drama remains quietly riveting, despite its 140-minute running time. Read full review
70
Village VoiceScott Foundas
Here, knowledge and understanding raise more questions than they answer, and the film ends not in closure, but in openness. It is precisely those qualities that give Heartbeat Detector its epic sense of humanity. Take them away and you'd be left with a leaner but markedly less compelling workaday workplace thriller: "Michael Clayton" with Nazis instead of lawyers. Read full review
63
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
A chilling corporate thriller with an intriguing mystery on the surface and a deeply troubling idea at its dark core. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterBernard Besserglik
The movie is, arguably, too long and overladen with ideas. Klotz and Perceval are particularly keen on nailing the use and abuse of language in formatting human behavior. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
The rather lost-looking Mr. Amalric, most recently seen on screens giving his left eyeball a furious workout in “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” maintains a suitably funereal mien throughout. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Director Nicolas Klotz paces his mystery plot so luxuriously that it feels like a ride in a company limo, though his ultimate thesis, that corporate culture is inherently fascist, hardly seems worth the trip. The saving grace is Amalric, who looks so sharp in a tailored suit that he can't sense himself rotting from within. Read full review
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