Metascore

Universal acclaim - based on 12 Critics What's this?

User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 105 Ratings

  • Starring: Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Robert De Niro
  • Summary: Brazil is a surrealistic nightmare vision of a "perfect" future where technology reigns supreme. Everyone is monitored by a secret government agency that forbids love to interfere with efficiency. When a daydreaming bureaucrat (Pryce) becomes unwittingly involved with an underground superhero and a beautiful mystery woman, he becomes the tragic victim of his own romantic illusions. (Universal Pictures) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 12
  2. Negative: 0 out of 12
  1. It's a glimmering hunk of fractured brilliance riddled with Orwellian paranoia encased in a production design seemingly pieced together from the shared dreams of Franz Kakfa and Salvador Dali, and shot from cruelly low angles.
  2. This modern cult classic is a triumphantly dark comedy directed by one of the film world's truly original visionaries, Terry Gilliam. "Imagination" is this futuristic film’s middle name.
  3. Reviewed by: Staff (Not Credited)
    70
    Blindingly obtuse, excessively morose, the film is nevertheless dazzling in its inventive and massive sets and spectacular in its techniques...A powerful work that is both bleakly funny and breathtakingly assured.
  4. 50
    Perhaps it is not supposed to be clear; perhaps the movie's air of confusion is part of its paranoid vision. There are individual moments that create sharp images (shock troops drilling through a ceiling, De Niro wrestling with the almost obscene wiring and tubing inside a wall, the movie's obsession with bizarre duct work), but there seems to be no sure hand at the controls.

See all 12 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 32 out of 42
  2. Negative: 6 out of 42
  1. RyanC.
    10
    A beautiful, dystopian mess.
  2. The conflict and contrast between humanity and efficiency is at the film's core. Set in a dark dystopia where the only escape is through the protagonists own twisted fantasies. Expand
  3. sc
    7
    Close to a perfect movie but begins to lose focus as some great ideas give way to a formulaic plotline.
  4. A surprisingly and, it has to be said, disappointingly confusing film. Despite the fact that, in its attempt to convey the nightmare of a dystopian world, this film was wildly exciting for its time, a modern audience perhaps less obsessed and, indeed, excited by negativity would find it difficult to follow. It targets a very niche audience, for whom I'm sure it interesting in its 'ostensible' ambivalence; however, as a universal film that is, one which is available and accessible to the masses it fails on a fundamental level: the plot line is insecure; it seems rushed and hurried, the proper planning of a film simply cast into the dystopian nightmare itself. No doubt, the integral themes and comments are there, but, ultimately, the watcher is so frustrated by the nonsensical plot line that any attempts to appreciate it are simply not worth the effort. Expand

See all 42 User Reviews

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