Fahrenheit 451
  • Network: HBO
  • Series Premiere Date: May 19, 2018
Metascore
47

Mixed or average reviews - based on 19 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 19
  2. Mixed: 12 out of 19
  3. Negative: 4 out of 19

Critic Reviews

  1. Slant Magazine
    Reviewed by: Chuck Bowen
    May 16, 2018
    38
    Bahrani renders reading passive without any sense of irony, reducing books to a bland MacGuffin. Unsurprisingly, Bahrani fashions a classic into a futuristic chase film with endless torrents of exposition, which represents every culturally bastardizing tendency it pretends to decry.
  2. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Dorothy Rabinowitz
    May 17, 2018
    30
    No one expects in a 21st-century film version, an hour and a half in length, anything approaching the subtlety and character that went into Bradbury’s novel. Still one might have asked--of a film titled “Fahrenheit 451”--for more than a one-note rant.
  3. Time
    Reviewed by: Daniel D'Addario
    May 14, 2018
    30
    This Fahrenheit 451 too often feels like an emojified version of its source material, cutting off anything more complex than an easy picture. Spend the time with a good book instead.
  5. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Darren Franich
    May 18, 2018
    25
    The dialogue sounds tin, near-parodic. ... Fahrenheit 451 has it heart in the right place, but its head sure crawled up somewhere.

Awards & Rankings

83
#83 Most Discussed TV Season of 2018
39
#39 Most Shared TV Season of 2018

User Reviews

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User Score
3.9

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 74 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 16 out of 74
  2. Mixed: 22 out of 74
  3. Negative: 36 out of 74
  1. Bertaut1
    Apr 23, 2019
    5
    An extraordinarily lazy adaptation

    I don't do remakes. They're a cancer of the industry. Where I am more flexible, however, is in    An extraordinarily lazy adaptation

    I don't do remakes. They're a cancer of the industry. Where I am more flexible, however, is in adaptations of novels that have already been adapted. After all, my all-time favourite film falls into this category (Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998) was the second adaptation of James Jones's novel). Fahrenheit 451 is also a second adaptation; in this case, of Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel, and, for all intents and purposes, it's a misfire. Bradbury himself has said the novel is not about censorship, as is often assumed, but was written in response to the Second Red Scare and the rise of McCarthyism. More specifically, it's a treatise on the dangers of an illiterate society unquestionably accepting the word of a monopolising centralised mass media.

    Adapted for the screen and directed by Ramin Bahrani, the film is set at an unspecified point in the future, after a second civil war has been fought. All aspects of society are rigidly controlled by the Ministry, an authoritarian government that believes unhappiness, mental illness, and difference of opinion come from unregulated reading. As such, all books have been banned, although simplified and edited Ministry-approved editions of texts such as the Bible, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, or, the Whale (1851) and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927) are available on the internet (known as "the 9"). Special units of "firemen" are tasked with locating and burning any remaining books, and estimates suggest that within 20-30 years, books will have become completely extinct. The film follows two such firemen; Cpt. John Beatty (Michael Shannon), the veteran and somewhat disillusioned mentor of Guy Montag (Michael B. Jordan), an idealistic rookie who believes unquestioningly in the firemen's work. That is until he meets Clarisse McClellan (Sofia Boutella), who educates him as to the real history of the US, the rise of the Ministry, and why they want literature destroyed.

    Now, you'd think that in this age of Trump's fake news and people using Facebook as a news source, something with this subject matter would speak volumes to a contemporary audience. And you'd be right. Unfortunately, this film isn't about sheeple and mass media. Apparently unaware of Bradbury's statements, the filmmakers have focused almost exclusively on censorship. But it falls down in other areas as well. Mildred Montag is absent, hence the theme of addiction to television broadcasting which tells people how and what to think. Additionally, the infrequent and scattered allusions to the importance of literary texts serve to undermine the absolutely essential nature of what a group of rebels are doing by memorising whole texts. This should be the film's absolute central statement, but instead, it comes across as a bunch of weirdos being quirky. Jordan plays Montag as a bombastic loudmouth TV personality. Shannon is, well, Shannon. Don't get me wrong, I love the guy. He's an actor of immense talent. But here, he's playing an identical character to the one he played in The Shape of Water (2017). It's an extraordinarily lazy performance. In fact, everything about the film is lazy. Bahrani's direction is flat and uninspired; the whole thing looks like Blade Runner-lite. It's all very conventional and safe, which neither the novel nor François Truffaut's 1966 adaptation was. And this conventionality and safety grind against the inherently rebellious subject matter, rendering it less urgent, and hence, less potent.    … Full Review »
  2. AndrewBurge
    Feb 7, 2019
    6
    While watching Ramin Bahrani's "Fahrenheit 451", I could not help but cringe at some of its ridiculous ideas. Like Captain Beatty (MichaelWhile watching Ramin Bahrani's "Fahrenheit 451", I could not help but cringe at some of its ridiculous ideas. Like Captain Beatty (Michael Shannon) the leader of the Cleveland Firemen, an organization responsible for burning books, hiding away and slowly taking out a pen and paper. Oh, the humanity! You would think masturbation is still a crime in that wanna-be utopic society. But the silliest one was an edited picture of Benjamin Franklin in a fireman hat burning books with a flamethrower.

    I found that pathetic. But "books are here to remind us what fools we can be". I realized that this society was so foolish that for them, something as ridiculous as that seemed true. It was a clever way for the film to tell us that we are a bunch of spoiled, privileged fools. Flat Earth Society and a measles outbreak in 2018? What the hell is going on? Who are we to call something ridiculous when the age we live in is ridiculous enough? But if this started to look like a subtle satire, it pretty much stopped there.

    Bahrani wanted to extract more from the book, but his focus is in the wrong place. Shannon and Jordan are too basic to deserve so much introspection and there are many quotes which of course are intelligent, they are from books, you uncultured swine! But their number are way too many, none of them standing out and dwindling their meaning. But this film is so pretentious that it thinks its intelligent just by randomly spewing them out. Its like the people who post quotes on Facebook. The problem is not that we do not respect the writers or that we do not think they were intelligent people (on the contrary), its just that throwing them out from a self-proclaimed pedestal of knowledge makes you look like an annoying wanna-be wisecrack.

    Then, of course, there is a slip there, something about DNA storage and some bird spreading knowledge by flying around and mating--this feels like hasted production but I am sure there is more to that Omnis thing that we have been shown.    … Full Review »
  3. eva3si0n
    Jul 11, 2018
    1
    The modern screen version by classics of anti-utopia causes in me only disappointment and despondency. This movie one big spittle in a face toThe modern screen version by classics of anti-utopia causes in me only disappointment and despondency. This movie one big spittle in a face to all readers of the original.
    Why Monteg became black? Where his wife?
    What the hell the novel culmination in general another in difference from the original. Where nuclear explosion?
    The only light spot of this "work" - an excellent game of the actor of Michael Shannon. For him it is possible and to give 1 point estimates.
    The worst screen version of the literary work that I saw.    … Full Review »
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