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Kontroll
ThinkFilm Inc.


9.1

based on 25 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 22 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

Vacancy

MPAA RATING: R for language, some violence and brief sexuality

Starring Sándor Csányi, Zoltán Mucsi, Csaba Pindroch, Sándor Badár, Zsolt Nagy, Bence Mátyási, Gyözö Szabó, and Eszter Balla

The massive labyrinthine netherworld that is the Budapest subway system, provides the stunning setting for Kontroll, a high-style, high-speed romantic thriller in which the lives of assorted outcasts, lovers and dreamers intersect and collide. (ThinkFilm)

GENRE(S):	Foreign \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Jim Adler Nimród Antal
DIRECTED BY:	Nimród Antal
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: August 30, 2005 Theatrical: April 1, 2005
RUNNING TIME:	105 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Hungary
LANGUAGE(S):	Hungarian (with English subtitles)

Also known as "Control"

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

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

If it weren't so smartly filmed and acted, this might add up to an over-the-top mess. But watch how inventively Mr. Antal keeps the action moving and you'll see why his picture has won a passel of prizes.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

This meandering tale of a pack of ticket inspectors working the Hungarian subway system delights in misleading viewers.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

I'm not going to tell you this is the best European film of the year, but it's definitely the hottest -- it's the one you want to run out and see as soon as you possibly can.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Kontroll is in fact an allegory, but one that oozes a gritty, dynamic realism.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

Though the story is thinly conceived, Antal throws a fantastic curveball in the second act. Kontroll is a hot ticket.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A highly exciting, visually alive thriller.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Antal's visuals create a haunted house where the lights are off in most of the rooms and there may, indeed, be a monster in the closet.

The New Yorker David Denby

Antal has concocted a phantasmagoria-outlandish and jumpy-but, at the same time, the movie is three-dimensional and weighted, with a melancholy soulfulness that becomes surprisingly touching.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Visually stylish surrealist drama.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Make what you will of the story and its symbolism, but Mr. Antal has made a remarkable feature debut with this visionary film, chockablock with memorable images.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

Nimród Antal's terrific feature debut Kontroll takes some time to get up to speed--but once it's fully underway, it develops a heady momentum and a devastating impact.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Darkly funny and metaphorically potent.

Variety Eddie Cockrell

Crowd-pleasing, darkly comic joyride.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It's the whooshing terror that fries your nerves to a frazzle. Antal's control never falters.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A Hungarian film -- an existential thriller, one might call it -- about an intelligent man who happens to have this lowly nuisance of a job.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Antal's debut is a sharp, blackly comic hugely entertaining thriller.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

Grungy and uneven, but it has a rollicking pace and clearly intends to be good fun so that audiences may overlook its unsteady rhythms, pretensions and inconsistencies and take it for the fast and very furious ride it wants to be.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

A tour de force of grime, fluorescence and destinationless velocity, is more concerned with atmosphere than meaning.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Smart, imaginative - and nearly impossible to watch.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Takes your angriest thoughts about urban public transportation and magnifies them into a grubby and rousingly antisocial fantasia on post-communist breakdown and bureaucracy.

Slate David Edelstein

I'm not sure what Kontroll adds up to, but if you're looking for a rackety journey into the bowels of urban life, this is your movie.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Bulcsú never surfaces from the underworld. Neither does the movie-literally or figuratively.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

What the movie lacks is a point.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Kontroll calls itself a thriller, and you will agree if you are excited by scenes of bored inspectors arguing with sullen straphangers.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Antal has assembled what may be the single most colorless group of mangy lowlifes I have ever seen.

The average user rating for this movie is 9.1 (out of 10) based on 22 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jaybee gave it a10:
[***SPOILERS***] This movie was great! I'm with Richard L. Was it his dark side pusing people off the platform? Did he really make it upon the platform at the end of the movie and see the bear girl. No one else seemed to notice her, maybe she was an angel and that's why he was finally able to go up to the outside.

Chad S. gave it an8:
"Kontroll" takes place in a dark setting, and yet the comedy isn't particularly dark. The situations are often sophmoric, but because they take place in an underground subway, and not a mall, the laughs are tempered by a sad knowingness that the lives of these transit policemen are desperately bleak. "Kontroll" uses its location with such spectacular results, the constructed airport terminal in Steven Spielberg's "The Terminal" seems to have more in common with Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam(for "Full Metal Jacket") than we realized, when you compare the artful artifice against the vastness of this underground wonderland. "Kontroll" is what "Taxi Driver" might've looked like had Robert DeNiro rubbed elbows with Judd Hirsch and the other cabbies from ABC's "Taxi". Like this imagined pairing, "Kontroll" has great ensemble comedy and a crazy person on the loose. The mind reels at how great this film could've been if it went for a bleaker ending.

Mathew B. gave it a5:
Visually great, but it's tone is frustratingly inconsistant, and it's ultimatly anti-climatic.

Angel gave it a10:
If you want to fall in love with a beautiful hero, who gets bloodier and dirtier and more delicious frame by frame, and makes you want to escape to Hungary and follow him down into his underground to save him, go see this film.

Tracy R gave it an8:
Really enjoyed it. Smart and gritty and a little poetic, too. A hell of a first movie.

Riccardo V. gave it a9:
Incredibile.

[Anonymous] gave it a10:
Must watch.

Kontroll ThinkFilm Inc.

Kontroll
ThinkFilm Inc.