Metascore
72 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 25 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 20 out of 25
  2. Negative: 2 out of 25
  1. 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.
  2. This meandering tale of a pack of ticket inspectors working the Hungarian subway system delights in misleading viewers.
  3. 90
    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.
  4. Kontroll is in fact an allegory, but one that oozes a gritty, dynamic realism.
  5. Though the story is thinly conceived, Antal throws a fantastic curveball in the second act. Kontroll is a hot ticket.
  6. 88
    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.
  7. A highly exciting, visually alive thriller.
  8. 80
    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.
  9. Reviewed by: Eddie Cockrell
    80
    Crowd-pleasing, darkly comic joyride.
  10. 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.
  11. Visually stylish surrealist drama.
  12. 80
    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.
  13. 80
    Darkly funny and metaphorically potent.
  14. 75
    It's the whooshing terror that fries your nerves to a frazzle. Antal's control never falters.
  15. A Hungarian film -- an existential thriller, one might call it -- about an intelligent man who happens to have this lowly nuisance of a job.
  16. 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.
  17. 70
    Antal's debut is a sharp, blackly comic hugely entertaining thriller.
  18. A tour de force of grime, fluorescence and destinationless velocity, is more concerned with atmosphere than meaning.
  19. Smart, imaginative - and nearly ­impossible to watch.
  20. Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    63
    Takes your angriest thoughts about urban public transportation and magnifies them into a grubby and rousingly antisocial fantasia on post-communist breakdown and bureaucracy.
  21. Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    60
    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.
  22. 50
    What the movie lacks is a point.
  23. 50
    Bulcsú never surfaces from the underworld. Neither does the movie-literally or figuratively.
  24. Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    38
    Kontroll calls itself a thriller, and you will agree if you are excited by scenes of bored inspectors arguing with sullen straphangers.
  25. Antal has assembled what may be the single most colorless group of mangy lowlifes I have ever seen.
User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 23 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 14
  2. Negative: 0 out of 14
  1. Jaybee
    10
    [***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. Full Review »