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Cassandra's Dream
The Weinstein Company


8.1

based on 31 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 10 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, Tom Wilkinson, Sally Hawkins, and Hayley Atwell

Set in contemporary London, Cassandra's Dream is a powerful and thrilling story about two brothers who are desperate to better their troubled lives. One is a chronic gambler in debt over his head, and the other is a young man in love with a beautiful woman he has recently met. Their lives gradually become entangled in a sinister situation with intense and unfortunate results. (Weinstein Company)

GENRE(S):	Crime \| Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Woody Allen
DIRECTED BY:	Woody Allen
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 27, 2008 Theatrical: January 18, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	108 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / UK

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...

New York Post Kyle Smith

It's a pulp story pinned to the screen with an ice pick of conscience in a manner that would have pleased Allen's idol, Ingmar Bergman.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Allen's latest, Cassandra's Dream, is one of his debonair ''small'' entertainments, the closest that he has come to doing a tidy, no-frills, down-and-dirty genre thriller.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

In thematic terms, Cassandra's Dream could be looked at as a rebuttal to "Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The movie is actually a softer treatment of the similar sibling anguish in Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead." Allen isn't enough of a great dark artist to pull off a full-scale tragedy the way Lumet does.

Time Richard Schickel

It is a talkative film, rather earnest in its tonalities, not at all a deft, witty or well-paced. On the other hand, it is, for Allen, a comparatively rare excursion into lower-class life.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Woody Allen’s latest excursion to the dark side of human nature, is good enough that you may wonder why he doesn’t just stop making comedies once and for all.

The New Yorker David Denby

Ewan McGregor’s bright-eyed Ian, following in the footsteps of characters in Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and “Match Point,” is a study in guilt-free violence. But Colin Farrell’s Terry is something new. Terry is a decent guy with many weaknesses, and, after the crime is committed, Farrell gives him a piteous self-loathing that is very touching.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

This 38th Allen film (and third in a row to be set in London) is a drama about two brothers that's so heavy in tone it seems inspired by Greek tragedy and the grimmest '40s film noir.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's not Allen's weakest work, not by far. But its impact is shockingly superficial.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

What we get are themes and variations on previous good work, to lessening effect.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Allen, who stays behind the camera, brings too little wit and too much contrivance to material that quickly dissolves into warmed-over Dostoevski.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Like so many late-period Allens, it leaves behind the feeling that he's made this movie before, but better.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The identical premise is used in Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," which is like a master class in how Allen goes wrong.

Village Voice Scott Foundas

Feels like one of Allen's laziest pieces of writing and direction, leaden with heavy metaphor and characters who rarely make it beyond the archetype--marionettes in a miserablist puppet theater.

Variety Derek Elley

Like a tragic overture played at the wrong tempo and slightly off-key, Woody Allen's London-set Cassandra's Dream sends out more mixed signals than an inebriated telegraphist.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This is a lame psychological thriller with an obvious story trajectory. It's a wannabe film noir with no atmosphere whatsoever.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Allen is obsessed with the notion of getting away with murder, mulling over which personalities can shoulder the psychological burden of killing without remorse, while others crumble under the pressure. The problem is, you don’t feel the human sweat and strain in Cassandra’s Dream, despite game work from Farrell and McGregor.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

An uninspired if perfectly watchable drama.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

A psychological thriller in serious need of both psychology and thrills, Cassandra's Dream is a wan, exceedingly minor drama by Woody Allen, who has started to recycle himself in London the way he had long been recycling his New York City pictures.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The Coen brothers might have pulled this off, but it's out of Allen's faltering reach.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

There's not a believable character, nor line of convincing dialogue to be found.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Allen's latest, his 42nd effort as a director, is the work of an artist devoid of ideas and energy. Perfunctorily staged and lazily written, it comes to life in only the briefest of spurts, usually when the ever-reliable Tom Wilkinson is on-screen.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

After making his best and smoothest drama (Match Point) in England, Woody Allen returns there for one of his most clueless and awkward, outfitted with a standard-issue Philip Glass score.

Slate Dana Stevens

Cassandra's Dream is not unredeemably bad. MacGregor and Farrell hack away at their implausible dialogue with admirable intensity (though when Terry starts to descend into mental illness, Farrell touches his limits as an actor).

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

As writer, Allen offers lazy plotting, poor characterization, dull scenes and flat dialogue.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The thrills are few and the expository dialogue tediously overwhelming in this preachy cautionary tale about getting too big for one's britches.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Farrell is quite good, though it's hard to buy the Scottish McGregor and the Irish Farrell as brothers. But mostly, the film feels rudderless, almost as if it's been directed on autopilot.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Instead of offering a perspective that, at the very least, laments a world where the flow of money hurts otherwise good people, Allen simply pushes the movie into an uncertain sinkhole between morality play and black comedy.

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

At this point, I guess we should just applaud Allen for his work ethic. Even at the ripe, old age of 72, he’s still making movies at the rate of one a year, come rain or come shine. The problem, of course, is that he doesn’t make good movies at the rate of one a year. In fact, by my count, he hasn’t made a good movie for almost a decade (1999’s "Sweet & Lowdown").

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Cassandra's Dream, an earnest meditation on greed, desire, murder and class struggle, is one of Woody Allen's funniest movies in years -- except Allen doesn't know it.

Premiere Eric Alt

Takes a long time to say nothing new, which is a shame because it wastes fine performances across the board (it's a nice reminder that Farrell, can, in fact, act), and, well, a really effective score by Philip Glass.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Ryan S. gave it a7:
It wasn't awful, at least. I think this would have made a better book, honestly - it reflects Macbeth rather nicely. But some of the lines were a but overdone, and Allen could have put forward the cyclical nature a bit more.

JD H. gave it a6:
On the surface this may seem to be a rebuttal to Crimes and Misdemeanors, but a closer examination sees that it is a very different story. Once one realizes that the story is not about two brothers, but about Ian, with Terry as a supporting character, it yields a similar, yet even darker conclusion than C & M. The clue here may be the title. As Cassandra was cursed to speak the truth but not be believed, Ian speaks lies and is believed by practically everybody. (If you were cursed with the former, would you dream of the latter?) The resultant narcissism propels him toward a inexorable descent to doom that is all Greek tragedy. Unlike Judah Rosenthal, Ian has no moment of remorse after the deed, though he was much more hands on than Judah. Ian is solely driven by his appetites and those around him suffer due in no small part to his lack of substance. Still, unlike Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point, Mr. Allen doesn't seem to be as on his game for this outing. The pacing seems uneven and things seem to slow to a crawl at the beginning of the second hour. Though this fits in Allen's trilogy of murder quite nicely, in Ian there are interesting echoes of Lee Simon from Celebrity, both in plot mechanisms and even Mr. McGregor's resemblance to Kenneth Branagh in that role. Still, an interesting study of a doomed personality totally subsumed by his refusal to take responsibility.

biff j gave it a10:
It's much better than the critics are telling you.

Carl G gave it an8:
Allen back in Match Point territory, though not quite as successful this time around. Some dark humor elements and some quite suspenseful moments reveal Woody is turning into something of a master of a suspenseful scene in his old age.

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Cassandra's Dream The Weinstein Company

Cassandra's Dream
The Weinstein Company