Aura, The

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Ricardo Darín, wearing a mild-mannered expression of emotional remove, plays the unnamed antihero, obsessed with imagining the perfect robbery. The ''aura'' is the clarity with which he sees -- or imagines he sees -- the world in moments preceding an epileptic attack.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

Sublime psychological thriller.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

The film is a sure winner for arthouse audiences enamored of the new Argentine cinema, but it has crossover appeal for venturesome viewers in search of a good mystery, as well.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Darin is an actor who's really consummate at suggesting two simultaneous levels of character.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Whereas "Nine Queens" was a movie of clockwork precision and blindsiding reversals, El Aura is more internalized and digressive but no less striking, in large part thanks to Darin's mesmerizing performance.

Variety Jonathan Holland

The Aura is far from being simply "Nine Queens2." Leisurely paced, studied, reticent and rural, The Aura is a quieter, richer and better-looking piece that handles its multiple manipulations with the maturity the earlier picture sometimes lacked.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

This is a tremendously atmospheric movie full of moody mystery, and it'll keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Mr. Bielinsky, in what would sadly be his last film, demonstrates a mastery of the form that is downright scary.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

The Aura holds together as a dreamy variation on "Reservoir Dogs'" heist-gone-wrong fatalism and the know-thyself confrontations of David Mamet's "Homicide."

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Bielinsky's "Nine Queens" was a complex romp through the machinations of high-stakes con artists, but this intricately plotted mystery ventures into darker psychological territory and never misses a step.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The tension and intrigue between the pretender and his would-be associates is as dense as the woods surrounding their hiding place.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The Aura is richer and less showy than "Nine Queens," and it lifts off from the gangster genre to contemplate deeper mysteries.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's less a deconstruction of the heist film than an ambitious contemplation of our fascination with the genre, directed with a dispassionate eye at a ruminative pace and centered by a queasily emotionless figure wading through a swamp of moral ambiguity.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jennie Punter

Its rhythm is deliberate and unhurried, yet the film is rich with detail and with small, meaningful character revelations -- the running time of more than two hours feels just right.

Village Voice Jean Oppenheimer

A hypnotic unease hangs over the film.

Chicago Reader Reece Pendleton

While never boring and sometimes quite gripping, Bielinsky’s manneristic style becomes distracting; he seems more concerned with generating an ominous atmosphere than with telling a compelling story.

Film Threat Don R. Lewis

While an enjoyable twist on the noir genre, a little more character development would have been nice.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Bielinsky is a most expressive director, achieving considerable nuances and depths of emotion with characters' looks, gestures, body language and silences.

San Francisco Chronicle David Wiegand

The careful camera work, beautifully dank cinematography and the quietly nuanced performance by Darín keep our attention, but in the end, the film's bigger challenge isn't its length, or its deliberate pace: It's that it's overly freighted with symbolism and meaning.