Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

34 10,000 B.C.
48 21
47 27 Dresses
17 88 Minutes
39 Alvin and the Chipmunks
55 Baby Mama
69 Bank Job, The
52 Be Kind Rewind
42 Bucket List, The
54 Charlie Bartlett
62 Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The
36 College Road Trip
31 Deception
51 Doomsday
41 Drillbit Taylor
29 Fool's Gold
57 Forbidden Kingdom, The
67 Forgetting Sarah Marshall
59 Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour
57 Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
71 Horton Hears a Who!
63 How She Move
67 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
78 Iron Man
35 Jumper
81 Juno
56 Leatherheads
41 Mad Money
37 Made of Honor
9 Meet the Spartans
48 National Treasure: Book of Secrets
39 Never Back Down
55 Nim's Island
50 Other Boleyn Girl, The
xx Postal
17 Prom Night
69 Redbelt
xx Rogue
44 Ruins, The
47 Semi-Pro
76 Shine a Light
37 Shutter
57 Smart People
37 Speed Racer
62 Spiderwick Chronicles, The
50 Step Up 2 the Streets
61 Stop Loss
55 Street Kings
33 Superhero Movie
92 There Will Be Blood
45 Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns
40 Vantage Point
36 What Happens in Vegas...

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

97 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
83 Alexandra
43 Anamorph
35 Babysitters, The
32 Backseat
80 Band's Visit, The
65 Battle for Haditha
47 Bella
63 Blind Mountain
71 Blindsight
47 Boarding Gate
60 Body of War
58 Bra Boys
70 Caramel
54 Cashback
44 Chaos Theory
32 Chapter 27
69 Chicago 10
xx Children of Huang Shi, The
83 Chop Shop
46 CJ7
78 Counterfeiters, The
30 Cover
49 Dark Matter
35 Deal
62 Dhamma Brothers, The
92 Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
73 Duchess of Langeais, The
83 Edge of Heaven, The
20 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
58 Fall, The
43 Favor, The
58 First Saturday in May, The
57 Flawless
87 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
xx From Within
44 Frontier(s)
57 Fugitive Pieces
41 Funny Games
66 George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
61 Girls Rock!
55 Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
57 Grand, The
58 Hats Off
68 Honeydripper
xx Jack and Jill vs. the World
67 Jellyfish
51 Jihad for Love, A
xx Kiss the Bride
37 Life Before Her Eyes, The
72 Life of Reilly, The
50 Look
65 Married Life
35 Meet Bill
63 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
55 Mister Lonely
52 My Blueberry Nights
71 My Brother Is an Only Child
55 Noise
63 OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83 Paranoid Park
55 Pathology
48 Penelope
90 Persepolis
62 Planet B-Boy
xx Plumm Summer, A
67 Praying with Lior
46 Previous Engagement, A
72 Priceless
80 Reprise
71 Roman de gare
48 Run, Fat Boy, Run
50 Sangre de mi sangre
85 Savages, The
24 Sex and Death 101
66 Shelter
75 Shotgun Stories
40 Sleepwalking
67 Snow Angels
67 Son of Rambow
71 Standard Operating Procedure
76 Stuff and Dough
68 Surfwise
xx Tashan
82 Taxi to the Dark Side
57 Teeth
56 Then She Found Me
55 Tracey Fragments, The
55 Turn the River
72 Tuya's Marriage
83 U2 3D
59 Under the Same Moon
76 Unforeseen, The
66 Unsettled
90 Up the Yangtze
55 Vice
79 Visitor, The
xx War, Inc.
64 Water Lilies
45 Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
57 Without the King
75 Witnesses, The
63 XXY
67 Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75 Young@Heart
45 Zombie Strippers

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Downfall
Newmarket Films


8.5

based on 35 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 69 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for strong violence, disturbing images and some nudity

Starring Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Matthes, Juliane Köhler, Heino Ferch, Christian Berkel, and Matthias Habich

A portrait of Hitler's final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII.

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Foreign \| War
WRITTEN BY:	Bernd Eichinger Joachim Fest (book Inside Hitler's Bunker) Traudl Junge and Melissa Müller (book Bis zur letzten Stunde)
DIRECTED BY:	Oliver Hirschbiegel
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: August 2, 2005 Theatrical: February 18, 2005
RUNNING TIME:	150 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Germany / Italy
LANGUAGE(S):	German / Russian (with English subtitles)

Original title "Der Untergang"; Nominated, Best Foreign Language Film (Germany), 77th Annual Academy Awards

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

Film Threat James Wegg

As Hitler, Bruno Ganz ignites the screen with every appearance.

100

The Hollywood Reporter Eric Hansen

One of the best war movies ever made, Downfall is a powerful and artistically masterful re-creation of the last days of the Third Reich.

100

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

In every aspect, his film is superbly made.

100

Newsweek David Ansen

A meticulous, spellbinding, provocative depiction of the final days of the Third Reich.

100

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

A riveting re-creation of three world-changing collapses: those of the Nazi party, of militarized Germany as a whole, and of the Führer who guided them into self-destructive ruin.

100

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Hirschbiegel and Eichinger, along with their large, brave and talented cast, have done something extraordinary for their generation of Germans, and for the world. They have willfully entered their grandparents' dirtiest, clammiest chamber of secrets.

100

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Downfall, whatever its shortcomings, bears strong witness to great evil. That is its triumph as a film.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Against the overarching facts of his personal magnetism and the blind loyalty of his lieutenants, the movie observes the workings of the world within the bunker. All power flowed from Hitler. He was evil, mad, ill, but long after Hitler's war was lost he continued to wage it in fantasy.

100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The first great Hitler movie.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's a bracing reminder that before Hitler took power, it was handed to him. The lesson resonates long after the credits roll.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

From the very first seconds a viewer believes totally in Downfall.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

As a piece of filmmaking, it's stunningly effective.

The New Yorker David Denby

As a piece of acting, Ganz’s work is not just astounding, it’s actually rather moving. But I have doubts about the way his virtuosity has been put to use.

Variety Derek Elley

Not so much a Hitler movie as a portrait of a totalitarian machine's spiritual and emotional collapse, Downfall is a cumulatively powerful Goetterdammerung centered on the last 10 days of the bunkered Fuehrer and those around him.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Much has been made about the film's "humanizing" of Hitler, but he's only human here in the most prosaic of terms.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Downfall and Bruno Ganz are deserving of Oscars they will not get.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

It's the well-wrought details that explain, perhaps better than any earlier film, how an entire country bought into Hitler's genocidal madness.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Powerfully disturbing.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Credit the great Bruno Ganz with creating a vivid Hitler: furious, unsteady, crushed and frankly cracking up.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

The reality it confronts is so gripping, we cannot turn away. This may not be the most sophisticated retelling of what happened while Berlin burned, but what a story it is.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Indeed, Hirschbiegel himself seems reluctant to single out a protagonist, and finally settles on Junge.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Downfall's overstuffed melodrama juggles countless subplots and a small army of characters who manage to make an impression in spite of limited screen time.

Empire Kim Newman

Solid history, fine cinema. Downfall is gripping, moving, and, in the end, profoundly horrifying.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Under the harsh lights of the meticulously re-created, claustrophobic bunker, that scrutiny is relentless.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

With a steely, unblinking resolve, Downfall stares into the abyss, but does not pretend to comprehend it.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

If I respect Downfall more than I was enthralled by it, that's because its portayal stops short of revelation. Once you witness Hitler's denial, the film has little more to say about him.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

It is fascinating without being especially illuminating, and it holds your attention for its very long running time without delivering much dramatic or emotional satisfaction in the end.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

This is a grim and sometimes guilt-ridden examination of the Third Reich in collapse. But it's also weirdly sympathetic, and not just to the peripheral figures in Hitler's twisted world.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The very thought of humanizing Hitler makes me queasy. If he had a good side, I don't want to know about it.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

That's the problem of Downfall in a nutshell: It provokes insufficient emotional and intellectual responses to a grotesque and atrocious dictatorship. Instead of the banality of evil, it gives us the banality of banality.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Has the arc of a Shakespearean tragedy, and all the essential components therein: loyalty and betrayal, conspiracy and delusion, self-destruction.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A bizarre film.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Intriguing, oddly banal and ultimately deflating.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The movie itself seems more familiar than fascinating, more innocuous than inflammatory, and, at 2½ hours, more tedious than anything else.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Downfall may be grimly self-important and inescapably trivializing. But we should be grateful that German cinema is more inclined to normalize the nation's history than rewrite it.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 69 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Andy H. gave it a10:
Film-making doesn't get much better than this. The decision to portray the main protagonists as ordinary human beings makes the crimes perpetrated by the Third Reich even more horrific and incomprehensible than would have been the case if they had been portrayed as two dimensional monsters. The feeling of claustrophobia and impending disaster in Hitler's bunker is palpable, and the scene in which the Goebbels children are murdered by their mother is truly one of the most appallingly horrific and uncomfortable sequences you are ever likely to see, but it is used to underline just how much the Nazi philosophy had perverted the mindset of diehard fanatics, to such an extent that they were willing to kill their own children rather than have them live in a world without National Socialism. A classic of modern cinema.

Myles #13 gave it a10:
Outstanding film on the final days of Hitler and the Third Reich! Fantastic acting (Hitler, Goebbels, Magda Goebbels and Prof. Schenk stand out) goes hand in hand with accuracy in the events... the film is simply breath-taking to view, whether you're familiar with the story (which helps a bit) or not. It gives you the shivers... not only is Hitler acted to perfection, but you actually feel sorry for the tired, withered old man whose terrible world is falling down around him. If you've never watched a foreign film before, watch this one... it will change the way you think.

Soldier B. gave it a10:
Fantastic. Superb acting on all parties. Chris S. couldn't have said it better.

Rob R gave it a1:
An extremely tame and sanitised portrayal of Hitler's madness. Boring, absurd dialog, no passion, no intensity, not a hint of grit. Oh wait, it has subtitles so it must be masterpiece!

Pat C. gave it a9:
Engrossing if drawn out exposition of the final days of the people at the heart of the 3rd Reich. Doesn't explain much, but doesn't obscure either. Rather than develop the characters, the film successfully presents a tour de force of people clueless while the hell they have facilitated on others turns on them and savages their cherished beliefs. These people had assumed the lives of others as expendable, so their own lives do not merit our empathy, specifically in the days of this story when their world is collapsing and no one has a safe place to indulge in self importance. Yet a sense of empathy is provoked nonetheless, not because we care about these people but because of the tragedy and waste of their misdirected mindsets that could easily have been our own. The film ends with a sense of emptiness reminiscent of a bad film, but within this particular emptiness simmers valuable understanding that alludes to how the German people rose from their ashes. The acting is generally straightforward as it should be, with the exception of Mrs. Goebbels last hour with her husband and children - probably some of the finest acting ever committed to film.

Chris S. gave it a10:
Absolutely haunting film that has left me going over the events of 1945 in my head again and again. The director successfully paints layer upon intricate layer of despair, loyalty, betrayal, joy, sadness, and delusion that must have been permeating in that small space. The one element that I think is missing, and purposely I think, is the idea of guilt. From Hitler to his henchmen, there is little attention to the idea that the choices they had made being inhuman or that they would have to answer to someone for their actions. Having been to Berlin, and having stood on the ground above that very spot where these events took place, I never once considered any sort of "humans" existing below that ground...only monsters from textbooks. This movie completely changed the way I view that now. I think it is often simpler to characterize people and situations in black and white or good and evil, especially those involved in such horrific acts. However, I think this film shows that things are much more complicated than that. Decisions and loyalties are based on much deeper and more complicated criteria than simply saying this path is "good" and this path is "bad". I give this movie a 10, although I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. I would, however, recommend it to individuals that enjoy thought provoking films that don't rely on mindless action and typical hollywood movies.

Frank O. gave it an8:
Despite the subject matter, I enjoyed this movie and learned a lot about the last days of Hilter and the Third Reich. Although on the long side, it did not drag and I was intrigued by the characters. Bruno Ganz was outstanding as a demonic Hitler.

Downfall Newmarket Films

Downfall
Newmarket Films