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100Juan Jose Campanella is the writer-director, and here is a man who creates a complete, engrossing, lovingly crafted film. He is filled with his stories. The Secret in Their Eyes is a rebuke to formula screenplays. We grow to know the characters, and the story pays due respect to their complexities and needs.
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100What are the odds that the year's most compelling mystery would end up hanging its hat on the year's richest love story
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100The wonder is that the film balances its many genres, from the thorns of murder to the bloom of romance to the thickets of politics, with such easy grace.
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100To call it a masterpiece is premature: That's a title to be earned only in retrospect. But I've seen it twice now and can't imagine what I would change. It fits together tightly as a suspenseful puzzle, yet it's also emotionally rewarding and sardonically funny.
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100Humane and harrowing, highly recommended. This one will stay with you.
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100The movie grabbed me and wouldn't let go during a bravura set piece at a soccer game when Campanella's camera glides into the stadium, finds Benjamin's face in the crowd and doesn't stop moving (with only a couple of edits) for six breathtaking minutes.
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100It's powerfully and richly imagined: a genre-busting movie that successfully combines the utmost in romanticism with the utmost in realism.
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100Director Juan José Campanella weaves together two love stories--between the victim and her husband, and the investigator and his former boss (Soledad Villamil)--and creates some masterful set pieces; his breathless chase through a packed soccer stadium is a marvel of choreography and top-notch CGI.
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A riveting Argentine thriller spiked with witty dialogue and poignant love stories.
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90The Secret in Their Eyes never lets you forget that you're watching a movie - and never lets you wish you were doing anything else.
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90Campanella has laced his story with twists and turns worthy of Hitchcock and the framing device of the novel (which forces the protagonist to sort out the whole thing through writing) is ingenious.
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90A beautifully calibrated movie in the most traditional sense of the word -- the ideal marriage of topic, talent and tone.
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90An attractive, messy drama riddled with violence and edged with comedy that comes with a hint of Grand Guignol, a suggestion of politics and three resonant, deeply appealing performances.
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90A deeply rewarding throwback to the unself-conscious days when cinema still strove to be magical, The Secrets in their Eyes is simply mesmerizing.
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88The Secret in Their Eyes has a decent shot at wearing down resistance to subtitled films. Don't be put off. This spellbinder from Argentina will sneak up and floor you. It's that good.
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88Although it is structured like a thriller, and its plot dominated by Benjamin's detective work, The Secret in Their Eyes is really a cautionary tale about the consequences of a life of too much apprehension and propriety.
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88The Secret in Their Eyes is that rare police procedural that engages emotions as well as intellect.
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88There are people, powerful people, who don't want old cases dug up. It's a tribute to the story's construction that the mystery only deepens, the more Benjamin digs.
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85The Secret in Their Eyes finds secrets everywhere -- even in what's driving Ben and Irene as they separately examine the decisions they made back in the 1970s. For both of them, as for their country, accurate remembrance of that period is crucial.
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80This macabre-yet-moving Argentinian drama from director Juan Jose Campanella is nuanced and full of intelligence and emotion; just when you think you have a bead on it, it gently swerves into richer places.
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80An old-fashioned movie-movie, the kind that's substantial enough to go out to dinner after and discuss all the way through dessert.
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80A drama that transcends cleverness. This beautiful film, directed with subtlety and grace by Juan José Campanella, really is about moving from fear to love.
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75A nearly perfect love story/murder mystery that unfortunately falters at the end.
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75Although The Secret in Their Eyes has neither the power, the artistry, nor the electric energy of its fellow Oscar nominee, France's "A Prophet," the Argentine film nonetheless engages with style, suspense, and seriousness of intent. Criminal intent and otherwise.
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75At times you may be moved as by no other foreign film this year - and then 10 minutes later be leaning forward in the seat just to stay awake.
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75An elegant romantic thriller adapted from a novel of the same name, is a terrific film.
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75The performances are strong enough to elevate things. Darin, Villamil and Francella are the kinds of actors who you just know you've seen before, but whom you probably haven't.
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75Although it has some memorably disquieting scenes, this story of long-delayed justice is sustained by its melancholy more than its thrills.
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75The performances are tender, the script elegant, the cinematography (especially during a virtuoso chase scene in a soccer stadium) artful.
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67Campanella’s script (which is adapted from a novel by Eduardo Sacheri) bogs down, however, when the focus of the story is on Benjamín, who is dogged by his memories and his inability to make a play for Irene.
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67The film sprawls across two decades and 127 minutes, but there isn't a memorable image in it.
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60About as deep as a kiddie pool, which isn't to say it's an unpleasant frolic.
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38The secret here is that the movie is rather tasteless. It has the high, slightly nauseating stink of perfume on garbage.
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Campanella, who overconfidently takes his time, outfits the film with ludicrous interrogation scenes, a drunken colleague who provides comic relief and redemptive tragedy, and a climactic flood of memories that plays like a trailer.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 19 out of 21
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Mixed: 2 out of 21
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Negative: 0 out of 21
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10
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DT10Excellent (a bit long)--Fantastic thriller.