Irrational Man
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: July 17, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
53
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 43 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
18
Negative:
9
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 18, 2015
Allen's dialogue is witty, his plotting zings along with forward momentum in all the right places, and his observation of elastic moral principles in flux is both mischievous and unsettling, yielding a tasty final-act Hitchcockian twist. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJul 22, 2015
[A] dark and wickedly funny and sometimes flat-out wiggy little number. Read full review
80
The New YorkerRichard BrodyJul 27, 2015
When the Dostoyevskian drama kicks in, Allen’s venomous speculations take over, and bring to the fore a tangle of ghostly conundrums and ferocious ironies, as if the director, nearing eighty, already had one foot in the next world and were looking back at this one with derision and rue. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesMark OlsenJul 16, 2015
Irrational Man never does make sense of the inscrutable Abe, just as most people, Allen included, remain mysteries to themselves and others. This finally reveals the film to be neither comedy nor drama, but an all too human horror story where the monster is within. Read full review
80
VarietyScott FoundasMay 18, 2015
Allen’s visual direction and editing rhythms are particularly sharp and precise this time around, as is his work with the actors. Read full review
80
Screen DailyGraham FullerMay 18, 2015
Irrational Man heads to one of the most startling pieces of action he’s ever filmed. It hints where he stands now as a moralist or cynic in a corrupt world. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAug 5, 2015
Woody Allen generates films with such rapidity and inconsistency that you can never be certain if this season’s offering will be a hit or a miss. I’m happy to report that Irrational Man is a delight. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonJul 30, 2015
Phoenix is perfectly cast as the ethically problematic Abe, whose novel approach to lifting himself out of an existential funk lends the story its suspense. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJul 30, 2015
A wobbly enterprise saddled by stilted dialogue and convenient contrivances. But view it as a Woody Allen film, and the plot thickens. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversJul 16, 2015
Allen has crafted a suspenseful mind-teaser that might feel too much like an intellectual exercise if Phoenix and Stone didn't infuse it with raw humanity. The conceptual bubble Allen creates in Irrational Man is potent provocation built to keep you up nights. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnMay 15, 2015
If the genre elements sustain the work as a whole, the plot suffers from the meandering quality that frequently plagues late period Allen work. Still, the filmmaking finds its groove in individual moments. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'HehirJul 16, 2015
Let’s give Allen full credit, by the way, for casting Posey as this wounded, sexy and emotionally rich middle-aged woman, a character enormously more interesting than Jill. Read full review
70
Village VoiceAmy NicholsonJul 14, 2015
It works better than most of Allen's recent films because it's a trifle without pretense, and because the director's finally smartened up — a little — right when everyone's written him off. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJul 17, 2015
Allen isn’t doing anything terribly deep-dish here, just gussying up the standard crime-movie tropes. To what end? His point, I think, is to demonstrate that human beings, no matter how educated, are capable of justifying the most awful acts. Read full review
63
ObserverRex ReedJul 15, 2015
At an obvious crossroads in his life, Woody Allen has been thinking about guilt, morality, consciousness and the limitations of the intellect. I wish he had done it in a more entertaining and satisfying film than Irrational Man. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineSteve MacfarlaneJul 13, 2015
Woody Allen and Joaquin Phoenix's collaboration on Irrational Man's antihero is the closest the film gets to a saving grace. Read full review
60
EmpireIan FreerSep 8, 2015
A thriller in the key of Woody. The “same old, same old” but still entertaining. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonDave CalhounSep 8, 2015
There’s something sloppy and sluggish about ‘Irrational Man’, even by Allen’s patchy standards. Read full review
60
Time OutDave CalhounJul 21, 2015
It all feels pretty familiar: the tortured genius, the younger woman, the plot taking a suffocating turn, murder as an existential debate, the world increasingly closing in on our antihero. But there’s something sloppy and sluggish about Irrational Man, even by Allen’s uneven standards. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJul 17, 2015
Woody Allen’s philosophical thriller Irrational Man is irrationally entertaining. It shouldn’t work. It’s laughably plotted and sketchily written. Intellectually, it’s jejune — or at least high in jejunosity. But if you can manage to keep your eye-rolling in check, you might find yourself getting into it. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisJul 16, 2015
The horror of where rationalism can lead (the death camps, for one) hangs over Irrational Man and helps hold you as does Mr. Phoenix, even with some bad writing and Mr. Allen’s narrative laxity and lack of interest in how real people live. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyJul 27, 2015
Allen isn’t completely on autopilot here. There are a couple of sharp, sting-in-the-tail twists near the end, and Phoenix is at least interesting. But Irrational Man would be lesser Woody even if we hadn’t seen most of it before. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyJul 15, 2015
Though Irrational Man’s existentialist moral crisis is mostly hokum, the movie still has a whiff of charm, thanks to a handful of good one-liners, a little misdirection, and Phoenix’s off-kilter performance, which completely ignores the rhythm of Allen’s speech in favor of naturalistic mojo. Read full review
58
HitfixGregory EllwoodMay 18, 2015
His characters may spout Kant and debate the ethics of different human interactions, but it's only sugar coating on top of what is effectively a simple and familiar story. Read full review
50
Boston GlobePeter KeoughJul 30, 2015
In the end, this feeble effort remains tainted, however unfairly, by the creator’s personal life. Maybe Allen should have titled it “Rationalizing Man.” Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayJul 23, 2015
Irrational Man isn’t a comedy. There are, however, moments that invite rueful chuckles of recognition, especially when Posey’s character is giving Abe the business. She strikes a welcome madcap note in what is otherwise a series of bland medium shots of people talking. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJul 23, 2015
Allen builds to a climax that is ridiculous and a comment on … I don’t know. Fate? Folly? There are plenty of both in Irrational Man, but they’re not often a comfortable mix. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJul 23, 2015
Irrational Man is full of holes. Abe's supposed to be a disillusioned activist, yet that side of him is so half-assedly developed, it's as if Allen himself didn't believe it. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJul 16, 2015
Ms. Stone is a consistent delight, whether thanks to or in spite of the script’s flirtations with self-parody. But Irrational Man isn’t funny either. It’s a Woody Allen film that the next one will make us forget. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreJul 14, 2015
Only Posey lightens up and lights up Irrational Man, which, for all its hectoring faults, is still a “Woody Allen Film,” and thus not a total write-off. At least the Newport, Rhode Island and environs locations are fresh. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottAug 6, 2015
For all of its faults, Irrational Man is a passable diversion at worst. While that's certainly not what Allen was aiming for, when you're talking about Woody Minor, it's enough. Barely, but enough. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 18, 2015
Allen has worked wonders in the past with superficially similar moral tales, but this one’s a sketchy rehash. Read full review
40
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 18, 2015
Both leads produce solid performances despite a sloppiness in both the direction and the writing. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 18, 2015
Irrational Man is a good idea, a sketch for a movie, but the movie itself is unrealised. Read full review
38
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanAug 17, 2015
Plotting has never been writer-director Allen’s strong point, and the story falls apart. It depends on coincidences that are unlikely individually and ridiculous together. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzJul 17, 2015
It is not merely a bad film. It is a collection of notes for a film that never quite evolved to the rough draft stage, much less cohered into a finished movie. That makes it more dispiriting than other notorious Woody Allen misfires. Read full review
35
TheWrapInkoo KangJul 18, 2015
Phoenix’s transformation from a scotch-soaked pile of tweed into a homicidally self-righteous ubermensch is fun to watch, but Allen too frequently loses sight of the story he’s telling. Read full review
33
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 15, 2015
It's not funny enough to be a comedy, not well plotted enough to be a thriller but it's also not smart enough to be an actual exploration of all or even any of the many philosophies it, and Abe Lucas, espouses. Read full review
25
Portland OregonianMarc MohanJul 31, 2015
Allen's movies, even at their lowest, have usually boasted interesting musical scores, melding jazz, classical, and American standards. Irrational Man, though, uses The Ramsey Lewis Trio's "The 'In' Crowd," an already overexposed riff, so repetitively that I thought I was seeing the film with a temp soundtrack. The real Woody, whatever his flaws, would never have allowed this. I hope he comes back someday. Read full review
25
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Nathalie AtkinsonJul 27, 2015
Not merely a bore, it’s excruciating. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJul 23, 2015
Every so often he inflicts something like Irrational Man on the world, which is so awful you have to wonder if Allen wrote it himself or farmed it out to some look-alike cousin out to destroy him. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJul 15, 2015
Irrational Man plays, like so much of Woody Allen’s work over the past 20 years, like a bad Woody Allen parody. Read full review
0
New York PostLou LumenickJul 15, 2015
Irrational Man is so clumsily staged and lethargically paced that it makes such clunkers as “Small Time Crooks” and “Cassandra’s Dream” look like minor classics. Read full review
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