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Capote
Sony Pictures Classics


8.0

based on 40 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 121 votes
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Rate this movie

FILM:

In Cold Blood (1967)

MPAA RATING: R for some violent images and brief strong language

Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr., Chris Cooper, Bruce Greenwood, Bob Balaban, Amy Ryan, and Mark Pellegrino

A profile of Truman Capote during the years he researched the story that was to become the basis for the book "In Cold Blood."

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Dan Futterman Gerald Clarke (book)
DIRECTED BY:	Bennett Miller
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: March 21, 2006 Theatrical: September 30, 2005
RUNNING TIME:	98 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Lead Actor (Hoffman) and Director (Miller).

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...

100

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Capote represents something unique in cinema.…Most eye-catching for critics and audiences in the weeks to come will be Philip Seymour Hoffman's brilliant metamorphosis into the persona of the late author.

100

Variety David Rooney

The mesmerizing performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the celebrated writer dominates every scene, while director Bennett Miller and screenwriter Dan Futterman's penetrating study enthralls in every aspect.

100

USA Today Claudia Puig

In Capote, Philip Seymour Hoffman's brilliant transformation into the mannered writer takes your breath away.

100

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

What Mr. Hoffman has done here borders on the miraculous.

100

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

On the personal betrayals that accompany Capote's ache for literary transcendence. The betrayals were necessary to create "In Cold Blood." This is why Capote is such an unsettlingly ambiguous experience.

100

TV Guide Ken Fox

Actor-turned-writer Dan Futterman's smart, subtle screenplay, which explores both Capote's determination to turn murder into literature and the deeply troubling questions he raised in the process.

100

The New Yorker David Denby

Small-scaled and limited, Capote is nevertheless the most intelligent, detailed, and absorbing film ever made about a writer's working method and character--in this case, a mixed quiver of strength, guile, malice, and mendacity.

100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A triumph that goes well beyond Hoffman's tour de force performance.

100

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

How often does one see a masterpiece about a masterpiece?

100

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The movie's excellence, a stylistic world apart from the strikingly photographed but rather hysterical 1967 film version of Capote's masterwork, is in capturing its subject without pinning him down.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Philip Seymour Hoffman's precise, uncanny performance as Capote doesn't imitate the author so much as channel him, as a man whose peculiarities mask great intelligence and deep wounds.

100

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The genius of the film, besides Hoffman's stunning performance, is that it knows exactly how much is enough. It never overplays, lingers or punches up.

100

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

This is an awesome performance in an outstanding film, a film worthy, if you can imagine, of the book at its heart.

100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Just when you might give up on young American film directors making art the way Bergman and Kurosawa did, along comes Bennett Miller's quiet, tumultuous Capote.

100

Empire Kim Newman

An outstanding film, showcasing a great performance, at once celebrating, analysing and criticising an important writer and his major book. You'll appreciate it more if you've read "In Cold Blood" recently and have seen enough footage of the real Truman Capote to know Hoffman is underplaying.

100

Film Threat Ellen Marshall

One of the most beautifully stark, yet provocative and powerful films of 2005 has to be Capote. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who gives his finest screen performance to date, literally becomes Truman Capote through effete mannerism, nasaly voice & self-absorbed tone.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Capote honors its subject by doing just what Truman Capote did. It teases, fascinates, and haunts.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

A fascinating and fine-grained reconstruction of that period in its subject's life, a time when he (Capote) pursued literary glory and flirted with moral ruin.

Time Richard Corliss

Hoffman and the film are terrific. Supported by the eminent Catherine Keener (as author Harper Lee) and Chris Cooper (as detective Alvin Dewey), Hoffman begins with a dead-on impersonation of Capote that soon becomes a kind of channeling as the audience comes to see this American tragedy through his eyes.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Miller and Futterman avoid the pitfalls of the genre by refusing to mythologize the artist, plunging instead into the soul of the man.

Slate David Edelstein

Hoffman goes beyond the surface mannerisms and diction. He disappears into Capote.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

The triumph of Capote is that it both grants and shares with him that twisted brew of obsessive identification and monstrous detachment that is the fertile burden of the artist.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Beyond the eerily evocative impersonation, Hoffman's brilliance lies in not only playing the shrewd puppet master but also revealing that he too comes with strings attached, the most dominant being his consuming need for acclaim.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A remarkably assured feature debut by Bennett Miller, a longtime director of commercials (and the documentary "The Cruise") whose no-frills style trusts that the powerful material and the uniformly excellent performances need little embellishment.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The brilliance of Bennett's movie is that it concentrates on the characters and their interaction and never becomes a mouthpiece for one side or the other with respect to the death penalty.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Capote is a movie that doesn't pull its punches. It's a knockout.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The movie implies that despite its thunderous success, the book also destroyed Capote, who crossed a line in his quest for personal glory for which he could never forgive himself -- no matter how many accolades it brought him.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Miller and Futterman tell their story with plain, uninflected film language, permitting the ambiguities to surface. Theirs is not the anti-capital-punishment tract of Richard Brooks' excellent 1967 film "In Cold Blood." It is a story about an accomplice to crime who lived to tell the story.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Catherine Keener is remarkably subtle and soulful as Capote's friend and helpmeet Harper Lee, who delivers a shocking verdict against him at the end, but the movie, as you probably will not be surprised to learn, is owned by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Richly provocative entertainment, as heady as a cocktail party with the Manhattan literati and as vaguely troubling as the morning after.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Indeed, it has to be one of the most eerie, morbidly absorbing and psychologically compelling movies ever made about a writer in the agonizing process of creating an important piece of literature.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Capote begins as a sprawling, vivacious comedy-drama in which Hoffman's Capote is only one of a number of fascinating characters, including Chris Cooper's upstanding, ramrod-straight lawman and Keener's tough, blunt assistant/sidekick/foil/author.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

The fault does not lie with Hoffman (who doesn't so much act out Capote's distinctive mannerisms and high-pitched lisp as channel them); his performance is undeniably great. Everything else – solid, satisfying though it may be – falls short of that greatness.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Whatever you feel about Truman Capote, you won't be able to turn away from him here.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

What "Capote" fails to reveal to the audience is the sense of a homoerotic attraction between the author and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.). It is more than implied that one exists, but there isn't a scene between them that supports it or even makes it believable.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The depictions of novelist Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) and editor William Shawn (Bob Balaban) aren't convincing, but Miller is mainly interested in Capote's identification and duplicitous relationship with Perry Smith, one of the murderers he was writing about, and that story rings true.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

A slight conceptual nudge and Capote would have focused on (as the closing line tells us) its true subject: an American author's success story. That theme is there, all right, but because it is not centered it is repellent, as the film pretends to be an account of the author's descent into collateral agony...With the true theme of fame-hunger fully fashioned, the film would have been a more authentic American epic.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

In the bell jar that is Capote, Hoffman bogarts the oxygen; everyone else asphyxiates.

New York Magazine Ken Tucker

Aside from yet another solid performance from Catherine Keener-playing a Harper Lee just preparing to publish "To Kill a Mockingbird," and here to act as Capote's unheeded moral conscience-that's the ONLY reason to see Capote.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

While the filmmaking overall suffers from a kind of tasteful, low-key blandness, Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Capote keeps the blood coursing through it. He's the bright, chilling spot of color at the center of an otherwise beige movie.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 121 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Doug G. gave it a5:
Excessively slow, unconvincing performance by Hoffmann, I did not feel much sympathy for the main character, who seemed to be mainly self-centered, lying and manipulative.

Isabel I. gave it a6:
It was just ok. The first part was better than the second half. I thought the last 20 mins really dragged. It could have been a made-for-TV movie. Don't understand what all the fuss is about.

Robert B. gave it a10:
This was simply the best picture of 2005. Seymout-Hoffman's channeling of Capote and a strong cast along with an intelligent screenplay and fine direction make it well worth savoring.

Jack T. gave it a10:
The real Best Picture of 2005 is Capote. Futterman's script and Miller's direction take the viewer on an incredible journey into the psyche of two madmen; one a murderer, and the other a greedy author who will go to the edge of the Earth, and betray those around him, just to acheive personal success. Hoffman is outstanding. In the first half, he expertly shows the various eccentricities of his character, but by the end of the film he really makes you hate this sad, wretched human being. Clifton Collins JR was excellent as Perry Smith, one of the most sympathetic murderers in history. The rest of the supporting cast is great, as well. I really hate that the Best Picture race was only legitimately between Crash and Brokeback Mountain, because Capote is one of the most captivating, engrossing, and just flat-out incredible films I have ever witnessed.

Ruth S. gave it a10:
This is just an incredibly good film, at all levels. It was much more emotionally moving than I expected it to be.

Jeremy K. gave it a9:
Of the films nominated for Best Picture (as though such an award holds any real merit anyways) Capote should have won by a landslide. Bennett Miller will be a Director to watch as he masterfully displays his "soft" skills as a Director and avoids cheesing it up by wringing out a typical biopic. Hoffman is pure magic, captivating from start to finish. Wonderful pace, color and emotional resonance -- unapologetically capturing the essence of the eccentric, conflicted-artist-soul of a misplaced and mysteriously courageous man named Truman Capote. A mesmerizing figure to be sure -- don't avoid it because you think this film will be dreary, dull or boring --- there is genuine comedy here too -- it will, however, be the realism that grabs you. Beautifully filmed.

Jacob R. gave it a10:
a mastepiece! a strong film.

Capote Sony Pictures Classics

Capote
Sony Pictures Classics