- Studio: Wellspring Media
- Release Date: Aug 20, 2004
- Critic Score
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88One of the best thrillers I have seen this year: tight, taut, and unpredictable.
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50Primarily a one-man show for Darroussin, and the actor, a longtime pro in the French film industry, comes through with a scarifyingly believable portrayal.
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100Strange, scary, and atmospheric, with a delicious Claude Debussy score.
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75The sights, sounds and traffic in Red Lights are oppressively ordinary; the people are unnervingly real. That reality doubles the suspense we might feel in a more slickly made but thinly plotted thriller.
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75The movie's clever ambiguity allows a number of interpretations. Perhaps it is all a dream, a parable, or a combination of wishful thinking and reality.
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80Accomplished and assured.
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70More reminiscent of Hitchcock's progeny than of the master's own films, Cedric Kahn's intelligently menacing thriller combines Brian DePalma's sexy style with the ice-cold cool tone of Claude Chabrol and the sense of mounting panic George Sluizer exploited in "The Vanishing."
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83It evokes the spirit of Hitchcock and Highsmith.
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83Cedric Kahn has caught the irrational compulsion, nail-biting tension and unpredictability of plot that is Simenon at his best.
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90Taut, atmospheric, impeccably made psychological thriller.
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90The brilliant, sinister French thriller Red Lights is a twisty road movie in which every sign points toward catastrophe.
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90Splendidly sinuous twister Red Lights sees Gallic helmer Cedric Kahn ("Roberto Succo") take his game to the next level with this inky comic thriller.
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90It conforms to that twisted French genius's typical opus: grisly, ironic but minuscule and sordid.
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80With ruthless efficiency and wit, Kahn ratchets up unbearable tension and releases it in startlingly visceral fashion, but his placid denouement is the most chilling scene of all.
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80A satisfyingly well-wrought, old-school thriller: Character drives the plot, literally.
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30It plays like a parody of suspense movies, then occasionally becomes serious, then boring, then makes a jarring 180, then frustrates, then gets vaguely interesting again.
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30The film, like the cheap double-scotches quaffed down by the central character, leaves a distinctly sour aftertaste that's hard to wash away the morning after.
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A classy and clever French thriller. Jean-Pierre Darroussin's performance as a browbeaten husband is entertaining, and Kahn's script brings wit and imagination to a straightforward story.
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88Darroussin is killer good and director Cedric Kahn turns Georges Simenon's seminal novel into a darkly comic spellbinder that pins you to your seat.
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75Red Lights is actually an examination of marriage -- of what keeps people together long after the passion has fizzled, and all that's left is bitterness and resentment.
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75Somewhat leisurely paced, by American standards, especially in the beginning, but it's well worth sticking around for the payoff.
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75Delightfully creepy suspenser.
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75An eerily affecting domestic drama combining elements of "The Lost Weekend'' with "Lost Highway.''
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50Before it turns into a thriller, and goes badly awry, Red Lights paints a devastating little portrait of a marriage on the rocks.
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67The slowness of the film's first half will be off-putting to many, but the film's turns and final twist will reward the patient.
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80Red Lights is the most ambiguously compelling romance around.
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80The true mystery, Red Lights' real thrill ride -- and what seems to interest Kahn most, despite his skill at arranging the trappings of suspense -- is marriage.
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70Director Cedric Kahn, Laurence Ferreira Barbosa, and Gilles Marchand collaborated on the well-honed script, derived from a Georges Simenon novel. The film works well with quiet tensions, but becomes less convincing and interesting once it moves beyond them.