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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Enduring Love

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 38 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 10 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by:
Joe Penhall
Ian McEwan (novel)
Directed by: Roger Michell
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 29, 2004
DVD: May 3, 2005
Running Time: 100 minutes, Color
Origin: UK
Summary
RATING: R for language, some violence and a disturbing image
Starring Daniel Craig, Samantha Morton, Rhys Ifans, Bill Nighy, Andrew Lincoln, Helen McCrory, and Susan Lynch
Based on the acclaimed novel by Ian McEwan, Enduring Love is a psychological suspense thriller about how fate shapes our relationships, how accidents can change our lives and how meaning is unraveled from sheer chaos. (Paramount Classics)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Changing Lanes Notting Hill The Mother Titanic Town Venus
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
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...
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
What blows us away is the power of Ifans' moist puppy eyes and chilling smile as a true believer undeterred by reality.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
British director, Roger Michell, strikes an assured balance between intense mood piece and Gothic chiller.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Enduring Love's plot inevitably drifts into Fatal Attraction territory, but its wholesale immersion in Craig's deteriorating condition render it a wrenching, uncompromising study of the human mind in freefall.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
A meditation on love, faith and science in the guise of a thriller, the movie's a tad schematic, but thoroughly gripping.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
It's the best kind of movie: so alive in its storytelling that only in retrospect do you realize that the ideas represent a metaphysical inquiry.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Technically outstanding and the performances are strong.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Most movies remain at the top level of action: They are about what happens. A few consider the meaning of what happened, and even fewer deal with the fact that we have a choice, some of the time, about what happens and what we do about it.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Contains impeccable performances, especially by the frightening Ifans.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A gripping, very intelligent British thriller. Slowly, inexorably, it ties you in knots.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
A suspense thriller that intelligently explores the ideal of lasting love.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
If you don't compare it with the novel, it's one of the season's better films.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Adaptation of Ian McEwan's 1997 novel takes a surprising number of liberties with the text, given the author's stature, but his name on the credits as associate producer would suggest his stamp of approval.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
Enduring Love is an intellectual investigation of love from three equally frustrating perspectives - the physical, the spiritual and that mixture of emotion, psychology and interpretation we call art - couched loosely in a cool stalker thriller.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
That climax stretches credibility, but the whole point of the piece is that the Joe of the opening has become someone else.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
This is a grim, often lifeless tale played with such humorless intensity that watching it is far more like an endurance contest than a love affair.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
A fatal lack of character development dooms Enduring Love as little more than a fleeting curiosity.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Has more psychological complexity than the average suspense drama, and the results prove more satisfying than not.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Ultimately, the movie suffers from the same fate as its characters. That first explosive scene creates a state of shock, leaving everyone and everything to drift about in a numbing vacuum.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Movie love is usually so idealized it ennobles behavior that ordinarily would be considered stalking. Enduring Love deliberately smudges the line between what is bizarre and what is simply human nature.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Thus does a book of literary distinction become not-so-grand-Guignol.
The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Mr. Michell whips the camera around too much and cuts into his scenes too quickly, but he pumps juice into this thin story and, together with his performers, keeps a movie going that might otherwise crash-land.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Director Roger Michell seems genuinely taken with the contrast between brotherly love and homosexual obsession, but these themes are overwhelmed by the suspense machinery.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
A cerebral thriller that dares to ask a fundamental question: What, exactly, is love?
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Luke Sader
Daniel Craig, in his meatiest film role to date, delivers his usual incisive performance, even if this intimate drama of contemporary Londoners pushes the boundaries of credibility.
Read Full Review >Empire Nick De Semlyen
Some great acting and visuals make up for this thrillers frostiness.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak
There's something flat and obscure about this well-acted stalker movie.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
This depressing look at love isn't quite worth enduring.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Filmmaker Roger Michell doesn't so much adapt Ian McEwan's fine novel Enduring Love, a surgically precise anatomy of romance and obsession, as eviscerate it and wave its entrails before the audience.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
The ideas behind Enduring Love may be fascinating, but they dont play; they sulk.
Read Full Review >Premiere Peter Debruge
One of those outrageous stalker thrillers in which so much trouble could have been avoided if the characters had only thought to call the police.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
This slender, increasingly monotonous stalker plot feels ludicrously overintellectualized-full of hot air.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Charles Taylor
If Enduring Love doesn't make sense as a thriller, it's equally nonsensical as the parable it wants to be.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Ed Park
Craig keeps Joe Rose on a hair trigger, but Morton is wasted as Claire; Ifans simply looks stoned.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Although this script starts off with great zest, it's ultimately a disappointment.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.3 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Chad S. gave it an8:
It's not Toshiro Mifune-and-Akira Kurosawa-good, but the director of "Notting Hill" seems to know Rhys Ifans better than anyone else. Even when Jed(Ifans) is in full stalker mode, his expressive eyes should neutralize the revulsion of even the most homophobic viewer. In real life, a straight man wouldn't want some hairy gay man serenading a "Pet Sounds" tune to him in a public arena, but in film, you can root for Joe(Daniel Craig) to relent, if only for the sake of a more interesting ending. Predictably, what you think happens, happens, but there is a sly indication that a "Cruising" moment could've been averted if Joe was more honest.
eli r. gave it a5:
While it excels in capturing atmosphere, the passionate performances and courageous examination of subtletly is entirely undone by frustratingly illogical characters, half-baked plot development, and a tendency to stray towards cinematographic gimmickry.
Carolyn W. gave it a9:
This moving was surprisingly creepy and thought provoking. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire plot, and am truly enamored by the twisted turn of events.
mike j. gave it an8:
I went into this film with no expectations as my wife wanted to see it and i was keeping her happy- but i was riveted. Craig is an amazing actor.
fiona j. gave it an8:
The 2 central performances from Craig and Ifans alone make this worth a watch. I'd waited about 4 months to see it and I wasn't disappointed. The only thing I didn't enjoy was the soundtrack.
Mark B. gave it a 1:
What was it that Roger Ebert once said about no good movie (except The Wizard of Oz, he later admitted) featuring a hot air balloon sequence? A bit of a generalization, to be sure: the original, non-Jackie Chan Around the World in 80 Days wasn't bad for what it was, but this unbelievably monotonous, pretentious, gussied-up stalker movie, in which director Roger Michell includes all the religio-philosophical twaddle (ana a thick slather of homoeroticism) that Adrian Lyne smartly left out of Fatal Attraction, begins with a hot air balloon accident...but as disastrously as everything turns out before and behind the camera, it might just as well have been a train wreck. Rhys Ifans (who was effectively repellent yet oddly endearing as Hugh Grant's flatmate in Michell's Notting Hill) plays a survivor/bystander of the tragedy who incessantly annoys another (Daniel Craig, whose response to this harassment is screaming the F-word so frequently that you'd think South Park's Terrance and Philip had a hand in his dialogue, only T&P would've used the word with imagination, variety and style). The results are offensive without ever being exciting or suspenseful; I'm no Michael Medved and absolutely never will be, but I'm getting really tired of filmmakers endlessly depicting Christians as psychotics. The normally talented Michell works as though he'd used up absolutely everything he ever knew about thriller filmmaking with the brilliant Changing Lanes, that terrific Samuel L. Jackson/Ben Affleck tale of escalating revenge in which he completely succeeded in blending action, characterization and message in ways that completely elude him here. In fact, his direction of Enduring Love's climactic confrontation sequence, and especially his final shot, would seemingly indicate that Michell has never even SEEN a suspense movie much less made one. There are only two possible reasons I can think of why anyone would want to seek out this junk: either to see what Samantha Morton (In America), playing Craig's significant other, looks like with her hair long, or to check out what a hot air balloon casualty looks like. Let me spare you the trouble: a.) Morton has a long career ahead of her, so you'll undoubtedly get plenty of other chances, and b.) like a busted accordion, only with intestines.
Frank P. gave it an 8:
Movie that makes you think about your own relationships. A bit like a Tom Stoppard play. Great opening and closing scenes.
