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. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Troy Patterson
    May 18, 2018
    60
    Shannon’s venomous glares and cinderblock grins only elicit the faintest shiver of dread. The actor’s failure to supply a proper freak-out goes toward the tepidness of this Fahrenheit, which has a real feel of about fifty-eight. ... The more interesting romance in the film is between Montag and Beatty. ... The quick sketch of the machismo of fascism makes a searing impression.
  2. IndieWire
    Reviewed by: Ben Travers
    May 14, 2018
    58
    As a story, it holds together well enough, if a bit too neatly. Even if you haven’t read the book, there’s a lack of urgency to the film because it fits so snugly into generic expectations.
  3. Slate
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    May 22, 2018
    50
    The world of Fahrenheit 451 is often more interesting than the film itself, which, after a brisk start, gets bogged down by sluggish pacing and a confusing new addition involving DNA storage.
  5. CNN
    Reviewed by: Brian Lowry
    May 18, 2018
    50
    Proving you can't judge a book -- or movie -- by its cover, "Fahrenheit 451" turns out to be considerably less than the sum of its parts. Featuring the tantalizing tandem of Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon, this HBO movie adaptation of Ray Bradbury's dystopian novel grinds along sluggishly, eclipsed by similar visions ("The Handmaid's Tale," anyone?) and becoming one of those films that, alas, looked better on paper.
  6. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Kelly Lawler
    May 18, 2018
    50
    There's nothing to distinguish Fahrenheit other than the fire imagery. And it's not much of a pleasure to watch the movie burn.
  7. Newsday
    Reviewed by: Verne Gay
    May 15, 2018
    50
    A disappointing adaptation that offers a new ending, when the old one worked just fine.
  8. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Peter Hartlaub
    May 15, 2018
    50
    Fahrenheit 451 has its highs and lows. But you will walk away wanting to read a physical book, and maybe embrace it for a few moments beforehand.
  9. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: A.A. Dowd
    May 14, 2018
    50
    Fahrenheit 451 connects those dots in clumsy, obvious ways, augmenting its chintzy, budget world-of-tomorrow with emoji and livestreams and Alexa anxiety. What the film fails to do, most critically, is dramatize the intellectual awakening of true believer Guy Montag (Michael B. Jordan), whose growing, secret love affair with the written word remains completely abstract.
  10. Uncle Barky
    Reviewed by: Ed Bark
    May 18, 2018
    42
    A disappointing film that can’t seem to rise above room temperature.
  11. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Matthew Gilbert
    May 16, 2018
    40
    The result is a story boiled down to a husk, a simplistic statement enacted by one-note characters whose internal conflicts--when they exist--are underexplored. ... Jordan, however, is the redeeming factor in the HBO movie.
  12. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: James Poniewozik
    May 16, 2018
    40
    [The new Fahrenheit 451] is generic, its critique muddled and its tone as subtle as a flamethrower.
  13. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    May 14, 2018
    40
    After a potent start, director/co-writer Ramin Bahrani’s updated take on Bradbury’s cautionary tale becomes less credible as it develops and ultimately suffers from some fundamental creative missteps that leave it unconvincing in the final stretch.

Awards & Rankings

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

User Reviews

All reviews »
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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