GAMES: GameSpot | GameFAQs MUSIC: Last.fm | MP3.com MOVIES: Metacritic | Movietome TV: TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

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

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Dying Gaul, The
Strand Releasing

Dying Gaul, The reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 62 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
6.6 out of 10
based on 23 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 10 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for strong sexual content and language

Starring Robin Bartlett, Patricia Clarkson, Linda Emond, Ryan Miller, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Peter Sarsgaard, Campbell Scott, and Jason-Shane Scott

A fiercely original psychological thriller, The Dying Gaul is a tale of lust, power, corruption, betrayal and revenge set in the seductive world of the Hollywood elite. (Strand Releasing)


GENRE(S): Drama  |  Romance  
WRITTEN BY: Craig Lucas  
DIRECTED BY: Craig Lucas  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: March 21, 2006 
Theatrical: November 4, 2005 
RUNNING TIME: 101 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

Nominated, Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic), 2005 Sundance 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...

90
Washington Post Ann Hornaday
A small, self-contained gem of incisive writing, superb acting and rich, expressive visuals.
Read Full Review
90
The New York Times Stephen Holden
Mr. Sarsgaard gives the riskiest screen performance of his career. Save perhaps for Sean Penn's outbursts in "Dead Man Walking" and "Mystic River," no actor in a recent American film has delivered as explosive a depiction of a man emotionally blasted apart.
Read Full Review
83
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Has too many contrivances, but as an act of sinister staging, it proves Lucas, the noted playwright, to be a born filmmaker.
Read Full Review
80
Film Threat Bob Westal
The Dying Gaul is Craig Lucas's film directing debut, and it's impressive. The film never feels one bit like a stage adaptation.
Read Full Review
80
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Lucas' beautiful script and a trio of first-rate performances carry the material with an intermittently breathtaking urgency.
Read Full Review
75
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The Dying Gaul stays interesting even when it asks more and more--too much, probably--of the audience's disbelief suspension.
Read Full Review
75
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The actors could not be better. Sarsgaard, Scott and the luminous Clarkson negotiate the film's razor-sharp laughs and bone-deep tragedy with resonant skill. Lucas' powerfully haunting film gets under your skin.
Read Full Review
75
TV Guide Ken Fox
Exchanging Buddhist mantras like diet tips, they thoughtlessly destroy themselves after destroying each other.
Read Full Review
75
Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
This may be the best work we've seen from either actor, which is saying something.
Read Full Review
75
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The Dying Gaul has the best kind of story in that it unfolds as a series of surprises, and yet every step, twist and turn seems inevitable in retrospect.
Read Full Review
70
LA Weekly Scott Foundas
If you cut through Lucas' thickets of self-reflexivity, metaphysical mumbo jumbo and banal potshots at media violence, there are three ace performances here by actors who can elevate and enliven even as mediocre a piece of material as this.
Read Full Review
70
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Before it disappears into a fog of confusion and damaging contradictions within its characters, The Dying Gaul presents an ironic, provocative look at what its creator, Craig Lucas, calls a postmodern Hollywood noir.
Read Full Review
63
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
It leads to one of those endings where you sit there wishing they'd tried a little harder to think up something better.
Read Full Review
63
New York Post Lou Lumenick
The heavily symbolic The Dying Gaul doubtless worked better as a play, but the film is worth seeing for its peerless cast.
Read Full Review
63
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
The film builds into a lurid and suspenseful thriller.
Read Full Review
60
Variety Robert Koehler
Despite a reliable cast led by Scott, Patricia Clarkson and Peter Sarsgaard, the human impact is ultimately lost in a too calculated scenario.
Read Full Review
60
Village Voice J. Hoberman
Entertaining if cornball, lacking the cold-eyed nastiness of something like Mike Nichols's "Closer," The Dying Gaul is tricked out with strident montage sequences and tremulous Steve Reich music. It's already drowning in an icky sea of language when Lucas makes a stretch for Greek tragedy and sends the whole Malibu playhouse abruptly crashing down.
Read Full Review
58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak
Takes itself awfully seriously. It feels a bit like a grudge piece, laboring to grasp at large themes, but it is as trivialized as the capricious world it explores.
Read Full Review
50
Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Does not go gentle into that good night.
Read Full Review
50
Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
Although The Dying Gaul tries to evoke the pathos of Greek tragedy and the stars strive heroically, there's none of the requisite grandeur in this trio of creeps to make it worth caring what happens to them.
Read Full Review
38
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
These are three characters in search of a moral pulse.
Read Full Review
30
Slate David Edelstein
A sour little psychodrama.
Read Full Review
30
Dallas Observer Jean Oppenheimer
The Dying Gaul becomes so overwrought in the last act that it ends up as pure histrionics.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

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

Chad Shiira gave it a6:
This film is the oddest thing. The three principal actors in "The Dying Gaul" play such appealing characters, but then they inexplicably stop being appealing after the set-up. The script starts to break down when the film makes its transition from a spot-on look at how Hollywood thinks to a psychological drama that has its talented actors trying to prove the old adage that people would pay good money just to see them read from a telephone book (in this case, their dialogue from a chat-room). [***SPOILERS***] Sometimes "The Dying Gaul" just doesn't make sense. In one scene, Robert (Peter Saarsgard) seems to have outed his tormentor, but in the next scene, he's caught off-guard and floored by a revelation we think is already established. When you get right down to it, Robert is pretty stupid, or rather; the screenplay made him that way. Robert gives his internet stalker pertinent information that could be used against him, in which he seems to have forgotten, when trying to identify the true identity of his chat-room poltergeist. This is a pity, because the opening scenes are almost as fun as Robert Altman's "The Player".

Wayne B. gave it a5:
An entrancing mess. Sarsgaard gives a shattering performance in an utterly senseless plot. There are so many logic leaps in the story that it becomes a pointless jumble wallowing in its own pretentiousness. But like a spectacular car wreck, you keep watching nonetheless. Sarsgaard will blow your mind.

Rhett W. gave it a6:
A very watchable movie with three totally captivating performances, but not totally satisfying.

oliva V. gave it a10:
One of the most original and emotionally scary film i have seen in a long time. a wonderful accomplishment that everyone should see!

Jeff M. gave it a4:
The acting is to die for. The house on the cliff is to die for. Peter Sarsgaard is to die for. But after the first third the plot rends into hole like Boston's Big Dig. Go, see it, really, if you've been curious. Then talk about other things.

katherine s gave it a10:
Utterly breathtaking, will stay with you long after you leave the theater, a beautiful haunting movie!

P. Nicol gave it a10:
Awesome...Crazy ending...but awesome!

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: iPhone 3G | Fantasy Football | Moneywatch | Antivirus Software | Recipes | E3 2009

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use