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Tycoon: A New Russian
Metascore
49 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 17 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 17
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 17
  3. Negative: 3 out of 17
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  1. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    88
    This is a meaty, well-crafted thriller that absorbs and disturbs you from first frame to last.
  2. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    75
    Lounguine tells the story with more discipline than you'll find in his earlier films, painting a crowded portrait of a society moving toward a future it can neither confidently predict nor look forward to with anything but nervous anticipation.
  3. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    75
    With more than a passing nod to the Hollywood mob movie, Pavel Lounguine ("Luna Park") crafts this superb post-Soviet "Godfather" movie loosely based on the exploits of bad boy billionaire Boris Berezovsky.
  4. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    70
    The flashback structure drains the story of momentum, but Mashkov and Uchaineshvili portray the reptilian glamour of cultured thugs with frightening intensity.
  5. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Thomas
    70
    In the end Tycoon above all evokes a melancholy awareness of the seemingly eternal exploitation and impoverishment of the Russian people.
  6. Variety
    Reviewed by: Deborah Young
    70
    A savvy, fast-paced political thriller dealing with the meteoric rise and fall of a new Russian businessman.
  7. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    63
    Like "The Godfather," it shows him (Makovski) as a crook with certain standards, surrounded by rats with none.
  8. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Damon Smith
    63
    Despite its ambitious depiction of post-Soviet economic woes, Tycoon is an uneven political thriller that suffers mostly from a highly convoluted story line.
  9. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    60
    For all its energy and fine acting, Tycoon has a frustrating lack of narrative coherence.
  10. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: G. Allen Johnson
    50
    Although Lounguine has a lot to say about Russia's struggle in its transition to global capitalism, his film is strangely uninvolving, lacking dramatic sweep.
  11. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Noel Murray
    50
    While the players are circling and silently sizing each other up, the audience may find itself straining to look around them, to see the history they're blocking.
  12. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    50
    Commendable as pop history but fairly opaque as drama.
  13. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    40
    Lounguine’s biopic is chilly and convoluted, too eventful to be boring, but never taking the time to immerse us emotionally in Makovski's world.
  14. The New Republic
    Reviewed by: Stanley Kauffmann
    40
    We become so distracted by the jigsaw effect that soon we are more concerned with the assemblage itself than with what it is about.
  15. New York Post
    Reviewed by: V.A. Musetto
    25
    Wait for the video, then fast-forward through every scene except the ones featuring Maria Mironova as a cheating wife.
  16. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michael Atkinson
    20
    Though a relatively sober essay on criminal organization, Tycoon is also thoroughly pulpy -- that is, crass, unimaginative, corner-cutting, and simplistic, with the visual vocabulary of daytime soap.
  17. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    20
    The movie covers too much ground with too little detail. It manages to be convoluted, complicated, incomprehensible and maddeningly thin all at the same time.
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