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Crimson Gold
Wellspring Media

Crimson Gold  reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 81 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
6.6 out of 10
based on 26 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 3 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Hossain Emadeddin, Pourang Nakhael, Azita Rayeji, Kamyar Sheisi, and Shahram Vaziri

A murder and a suicide occur early one morning in a jewelry store. Behind this headline lies the story of a desperate man's feelings of humiliation in a world of social injustice.


GENRE(S): Drama  |  Foreign  
WRITTEN BY: Abbas Kiarostami  
DIRECTED BY: Jafar Panahi  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: July 20, 2004 
Video: July 20, 2004 
Theatrical: January 16, 2003 
RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: Iran 
LANGUAGE(S): Farsi (with English subtitles) 

Original title "Talaye sorgh"; Best Film, 2003 Chicago International Film Festival

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...

100
Village Voice J. Hoberman
Iranian director Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold is an anti-blockbuster--a deceptively modest undertaking that brilliantly combines unpretentious humanism and impeccable formal values.
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100
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
It's a troubling, courageous, compulsively watchable work of art.
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100
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
This is the first beautiful performance in the year's first great movie.
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100
San Francisco Chronicle Jonathan Curiel
An engrossing tale of class differences that reveals tiny details of one man’s descent into hell.
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90
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Provides one of the rare glimpses of the upper class to come out of recent Iranian cinema--the last one in memory was 1996's exquisite, Ibsen-esque melodrama "Leila"--and director Jafar Panahi (The Circle) captures it vividly through his hero's wounded obsession.
Read Full Review
90
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Kiarostami's brilliantly suggestive script, which is quite unlike anything else he's written and is marred only slightly by one of his obligatory sages turning up gratuitously near the beginning.
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90
The Hollywood Reporter Richard James Havis
A flawlessly executed character study.
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90
Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
An extraordinary film in many ways, the least of which is its unorthodox casting.
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88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
As in "Taxi Driver," the protagonist is a damaged war veteran, an invisible man who travels about the city and internalizes its contradictions until he explodes.
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88
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
It settles into the typical reflective mode of Iranian films, but something IS happening: A human being is slowly, sullenly, silently approaching his combustion point.
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88
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A stark, minimalist near-masterpiece about the creation of a murderer in modern Iran.
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83
Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
As with many Iranian films, reality and fiction collide (the lead actor really is a pizza deliveryman), and the moral of the story is a surprisingly blunt critique of the growing inequality of wealth in the slowly Westernizing nation.
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80
LA Weekly Scott Foundas
The result is the work of a funereal yet darkly funny neorealist, sounding the rallying cry against the inflexible maxim casually delivered by one of his own film's characters.
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80
Washington Post Desson Thomson
Unfolds with a marvelously understated humanism.
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80
Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
Through everyday actions and gestures -- in Hussein's awkward exchanges with other people, in his tender fumbling of his fiancée's purse -- Panahi shows a man for whom life has become increasingly arduous, alien. The filmmaker captures, in other words, what Bresson called "the force in the air before the storm."
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80
Variety Lisa Nesselson
Succeeds as a universal account of frustration applicable to any urban center where the gap between haves and have-nots is tauntingly visible.
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75
New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Another excellent example of how Iranian cinema uses deceptively simple techniques to decode devastating truths about human nature.
Read Full Review
75
New York Post Jonathan Foreman
Crimson Gold has been likened to an Iranian "Taxi Driver," but it's nothing of the sort, though it is powerful in a quiet, minimalist way.
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75
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The success of Crimson Gold depends to an intriguing degree on the performance of its leading actor, a large, phlegmatic man.
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70
The New York Times Dana Stevens
The occasional obviousness of the film's themes is more than balanced by the subtlety of its methods and by the stolid, irreducible individuality of its protagonist, Hussein.
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70
The New Yorker Anthony Lane
Its characters are no different from the rest of us, in the cluster of their annoyances and kicks, yet utterly removed from us by a system that frowns upon ordinary desire. Jafar Panahi's movie, unsurprisingly, has been outlawed in Iran. Nobody likes a prophet. [19 January 2004, p. 93]
70
Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf
Not a great film, but a good one.
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67
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
A fable of money as the root of jealousy, discord, violence, but the film's slippery fascination as sociological exposé is the flip side of its thinness as drama.
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63
Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
There's a subtlety to Crimson Gold that deserves applause.
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60
New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Watching it is like getting a peek behind the curtain. But it's frustrating, too, because the casting of Emadeddin as a murderer-in-the-making precludes any psychological depth. And as an indictment of social inequality, which is the film's calling card, Panahi inadvertantly makes a far better case for the haves than for the have-nots.
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60
TV Guide Staff (Not Credited)
Though it unfolds like a thriller, it's ultimately a tragedy.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 6.6 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Vince H. gave it a 10:
"Crimson Gold" is what the French call "copinage", which means a movie made solely by and for the cinema community. i.e. it is essentially a movie for critics and even the most patient film buff may be either bored or angry (read JD Knight's review). If you are a fan of Iranian cinema, especially the previous films of Abbas Kiarostami (who wrote the scipt) and Jafar Panahi (who made "The Circle" & "The White Balloon"), you will not be dissapointed. This is Kiarostami's best script since "Taste of Cherry" and Panahi's best direction yet. The main anchor of the film is Hossain Emadeddin's main perf, which is the most powerful & memorable of the year by far.

JD Knight gave it a 1:
I left after the first hour. Probably the most tedious movie I have ever seen. Do not waste your time, despite what the critics tell you.

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