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Beat That My Heart Skipped, The
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 11 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by:
Jacques Audiard
Tonino Benacquista
Directed by: Jacques Audiard
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 1, 2005
DVD: November 15, 2005
Running Time: 107 minutes, Color
Origin: France
Language(s): French (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Romain Duris, Aure Atika, Emmanuelle Devos, Niels Arestrup, Jonathan Zaccaï, Linh Dan Pham, Mélanie Laurent, and Anton Yakovlev
In this follow-up to his critical smash "Read My Lips," Jacques Audiard has adapted and updated James Toback’s cult 1978 noir "Fingers" to come up with this memorable character study about a young man torn between a life of crime and classical music. (Wellspring Media)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Read My Lips
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Audiard's superb remake improves on the original significantly, investing it with aesthetic grandeur and emotional depth.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
What has resulted is a blistering film you feel in the pit of your stomach, a jumpy, edgy piece of work that thrusts us into a personal maelstrom so tortured and intense, the emotions could be spread with a knife.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
Audiard's take is fevered, immediate, and hopeful--a story of a man recovering his soul. The most intense and compelling sections of The Beat are almost word for word from "Fingers" (albeit translated into French), but this beat changes everything.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
There are remakes and there are remakes. I don't want to belabor the flaws and sexual excesses of the original; its great strength was its explosive energy. Still, this one investigates the unfulfilled potential of the first one so thoroughly, and develops it so audaciously, that it qualifies as a brilliant reinvention.
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
It's a thriller that comes at you with gut-clutching ferocity, spewing blood and sex, shaking you up and scrambling your responses.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Beautifully shot, in long, fluid takes, The Beat That My Heart Skipped is that rare thing: a remake that improves on its source.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
The film confirms director Audiard as a master of visual mood, in this case one of barely expressed emotional panic.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Gianni Truzzi
It's a film that, by its complexity of character and mastery of tone, surpasses the original it was intended to honor.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The Beat That My Heart Skipped lacks the screw-loose existential vibrance of "Fingers," yet it teases out a romantic underside to the original I never quite knew was there.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
Audiard's work is tense, vivid, and alert, and he's got the right actor as Tom, an irresistibly attractive guy who's pushing thirty yet has no more control over his impulses than a chaotic boy.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray
As tense and taut as any crime saga, but the stakes are more personal.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
It's more than a simple improvement, inverting some of the original's qualities so that the impersonal, well-crafted filmmaking remains lucid throughout.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Might not be as intriguingly odd as the picture that inspired it. But like that earlier picture, it bristles with life and energy. It's a movie made with equal measures of bravado and humility -- the same mix of qualities you need to play Beethoven, Mozart or Bach.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
From the performances of its first rate cast to the infectious score and Audiard's deft direction, this is one of the most accomplished movies you'll see anytime soon-old, new or, as is the case here, combining the best of both.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Jean Oppenheimer
A character study, the film succeeds in large measure due to the kinetically charged performance of Romain Duris.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
A nifty piece of work -- with, by the way, a fantastic musical score and soundtrack -- that, if there's any justice in the movie world, will eventually earn a mystique all its own.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
Even when deadly silent, though, as he is through most of the film, Duris is brutally eloquent.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
A good French film that was inspired by an American classic.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Doesn't replace "Fingers," but joins it as the portrait of a man reaching out desperately toward his dying ideals.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
Out of a borrowed and preposterous premise, Audiard has fashioned a film that is more haunting--and more compellingly watchable--than it has any right to be.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Beat has a moody, furtive quality that jibes perfectly with the perplexed life of a pianist-gangster.
Read Full Review >Variety Eddie Cockrell
Stands reasonably well on its own as an urgent, updated genre meditation on nurture vs. nature.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Plays like a piece of mediocre music, gorgeously rendered.
Read Full Review >Empire David Parkinson
Simmering study of a petty hood-cum-wannabe pianist succumbing to his innate violent side - but there might be a touch too much ivory tinkling for some.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
The problem with The Beat That My Heart Skipped, as it was with "Fingers," is that the gravity of the character’s psychological divide is clear after the first half hour, and both films add little in the next hour to deepen our – or the characters’ – understanding or entanglement.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The Beat That My Heart Skipped has nonetheless brought attention to a nearly lost classic. For more than two decades, "Fingers" was not available on video or DVD and was rarely screened. But it's available now, and if you've never seen it, put it on your must-rent list immediately.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
As it is, Duris, capable and dull, is no Keitel, 2005 is no 1978, and The Beat That My Heart Skipped is no "Fingers."
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
Contrivances accrue so thickly that the source seems to be not 1978 Toback, but 1930s Warner Brothers. The film sweats to be up-to-date with ultra-hectic editing, pace, elision, and sangfroid, but they can't verify the pasteboard base.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 11 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Timothy D. gave it a9:
Intense, compelling, emotionally complex, with great work by Duris, the male lead, who brings subtlety and urgency to what could have been a terminally unsympathetic character. I don't know that I could say I enjoyed much of it, but I couldn't stop watching -- in this case that is a high compliment.
T Ngo gave it a9:
Compelling and emotionally resonant. The intensity is there from the first frame on, and never lets go. Part thriller/part character study. Unlike the two previous posters, I did not think that the violence was gratuitous at all IMHO. It was apt to depict the lead character's heavy gangster life and therefore, later contrast it with his budding musical profession.
Francis T. gave it a9:
This remake is a vibrant, ugly, and still beautiful film that examines a conflict very close to my heart.
Merrill H. gave it a2:
Terrible film, unnecessary voilence and undeveloped characters.
Jay W. gave it a6:
Everything we really need to know is in the first thirty minutes. An interesting premise belabored by needless, repetitive violence to fill the obligatory 90-minute with popcorn theatrical format. Powerful performances nevertheless.
