- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
75Good has a stagy fustiness, but it's worth seeing for Mortensen, who makes this study of a "good German" look creepily contemporary.
-
70Paced deliberately in a way that reinforces the tragedy of evil flourishing when good men do nothing, Good may find boxoffice returns slow to build but the film's aim is true and patient audiences will be well rewarded.
-
70Good demonstrates the surprising power of character flaws in drama. How else to explain that the portrayal of a good man who does nothing in Good should prove more dramatically compelling than the stories in "Valkyrie" and "Defiance" of good men who did good?
-
60An interesting idea, thoughtfully acted and visually intriguing. However, it is nearly undone by a lead character that fails to represent the general idea that the film is allegedly about.
-
50The banality of evil has met its match in the banality of Good, a Holocaust parable that barely registers a pulse.
-
50Though the film opens with an intriguing burnished look, it bogs down about halfway through with talkiness and uneven pacing.
-
50Viggo Mortensen looks the part but never brings it home with great conviction or passion. I never believed in the character and that greatly diminished the film's ability to argue its ethical case.
-
50It's an old-fashioned hoke-fest, in which the otherness of Germany is connoted by having everyone speak with a British accent.
-
50Good contributes very little to a conundrum that has occupied historians and psychologists for half a century.
-
40An uncharacteristically stiff Mortensen can't break free from the clichés that constrain his character, who feels more like a symbol than a real person.
-
40As a film, it's overly tidy, and the surreal concentration-camp climax gave at least one viewer an inappropriate fit of giggles.
-
Regrettably, the long-delayed adaptation from director Vicente Amorim and screenwriter John Wrathall gets crushed by the weight of trying to be something more; it's really just the story of a rather ordinary but disappointing man. The filmmakers reach for metaphor and allegory, but it comes at the expense of an emotional connection.
-
40Inept works like Good, which remains, like most such works, on the anecdotal fringe of the problem.
-
40Considering its theme and setting, there's something very wrong with a Good that seems merely competent, uninspired and a bit old-hat.
-
20In Good, the anemic screen adaptation of C. P. Taylor's play about a respectable "good German" who passively acquiesces to Hitler's agenda, Viggo Mortensen, miscast and ineptly directed by Vicente Amorim, plays John Halder, a liberal, mild-mannered literature professor who becomes a Nazi.
-
So incompetently mounted by Brazilian director Vicente Amorim (it takes a clumsy directorial hand to make Viggo Mortensen come on like Sesame Street's Mr. Noodle) as to be utterly incoherent.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 2 out of 2
-
Mixed: 0 out of 2
-
Negative: 0 out of 2
-
April10Flawless performance, great acting. Intriguing, authentic movie.
-
EdouradD.10This film told me a lot about myself and our world. Subtle and affecting.