Koch
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Metascore
71 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 17 Critics What's this?

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  • Starring: Edward I. Koch
  • Summary: Former Mayor Ed Koch ruled New York from 1978 to 1989—a down-and-dirty decade of grit, graffiti, near-bankruptcy and rampant crime. Making his directorial debut, former Wall Street Journal reporter Neil Barsky has crafted an intimate and revealing portrait of this intensely private man and t the town he helped transform. Through candid interviews and rare archival footage, Koch thrillingly chronicles the personal and political toll of running the world’s most wondrous city in a time of upheaval and reinvention. [Zeitgeist Films]… Collapse

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 17
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 17
  3. Negative: 0 out of 17
  1. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Noel Murray
    Jan 30, 2013
    91
    Neil Barsky's Koch doesn't try to do anything radical as a piece of filmmaking, but Barsky - a former newspaper reporter - covers Koch's story magnificently as a journalist.
  2. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    Feb 28, 2013
    80
    Koch the film makes the point without belaboring it — a mayor and a metropolis linked by tumultuous events in the worst and best of times.
  3. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Betsy Sharkey
    Feb 28, 2013
    80
    Barsky does a good job of taking all the complexity of such a major personality and the times in which he flourished and boiling it down to the essentials.
  4. Variety
    Reviewed by: Ronnie Scheib
    Feb 3, 2013
    60
    Barsky wisely includes just enough dissenting voices and admissions of grievous error by Koch himself to prevent the picture from seeming like a 100% feel-good puff piece.

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  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. TVJerry
    6
    This is a doc about Ed Koch, a strong-willed, outspoken mayor of New York City. In addition to excerpts from interviews with him and his contemporaries, there's lots of historical footage (most of which is in distractingly bad blown-up video). The film seems to spend more time on his major controversies than on his accomplishments and there's nothing inventive about the way it's presented. Just a straightforward doc.… Expand

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