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Brazil
Universal Pictures


8.1

based on 12 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 45 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin, Kim Greist, and Jim Broadbent

Brazil is a surrealistic nightmare vision of a "perfect" future where technology reigns supreme. Everyone is monitored by a secret government agency that forbids love to interfere with efficiency. When a daydreaming bureaucrat (Pryce) becomes unwittingly involved with an underground superhero and a beautiful mystery woman, he becomes the tragic victim of his own romantic illusions. (Universal Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Cult \| Fantasy \| Sci-fi
WRITTEN BY:	Terry Gilliam Charles McKeown Tom Stoppard
DIRECTED BY:	Terry Gilliam
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: July 13, 1999 Video: May 14, 1996 Theatrical: December 18, 1985
RUNNING TIME:	142 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Named Best Picture of 1985 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

The New York Times Janet Maslin

Brazil may not be the best film of the year, but it's a remarkable accomplishment for Mr. Gilliam, whose satirical and cautionary impulses work beautifully together. His film's ambitious visual style bears this out, combining grim, overpowering architecture with clever throwaway touches.

100

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

This modern cult classic is a triumphantly dark comedy directed by one of the film world's truly original visionaries, Terry Gilliam. "Imagination" is this futuristic film’s middle name.

100

Chicago Reader Dave Kehr

A ferociously creative 1985 black comedy filled with wild tonal contrasts, swarming details, and unfettered visual invention--every shot carries a charge of surprise and delight.

100

Entertainment Weekly Staff (Not Credited)

One of those rare gems that prove equally stunning on both aesthetic and cerebral levels.

100

Film.com John Hartl

For all its occasional long-windedness and visual dazzle, Brazil may be the "Strangelove" of the 1980s.

100

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

It's a glimmering hunk of fractured brilliance riddled with Orwellian paranoia encased in a production design seemingly pieced together from the shared dreams of Franz Kakfa and Salvador Dali, and shot from cruelly low angles.

100

Time Richard Corliss

There is not a more daft, more original or haunting vision to be seen on American movie screens this year... A terrific movie has escaped the asylum without a lobotomy. The good guys, the few directors itching to make films away from the assembly line, won one for a change. [30 Dec 1985, p.84]

100

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

It remains a stunning achievement, if nearly as exhausting and frustrating as the Tex Avery bureaucracy it roasts, but Gilliam's stylistic dysfunctionalities, art-directed out of junkyards, are what still percolate in the forebrain.

Variety Staff (Not Credited)

Chillingly hilarious.

TV Guide Staff (Not Credited)

Blindingly obtuse, excessively morose, the film is nevertheless dazzling in its inventive and massive sets and spectacular in its techniques...A powerful work that is both bleakly funny and breathtakingly assured.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Perhaps it is not supposed to be clear; perhaps the movie's air of confusion is part of its paranoid vision. There are individual moments that create sharp images (shock troops drilling through a ceiling, De Niro wrestling with the almost obscene wiring and tubing inside a wall, the movie's obsession with bizarre duct work), but there seems to be no sure hand at the controls.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Brazil doesn't add up to much, not only because its cautionary tales are familiar, but because it has no real point of view, nothing urgent under its facile symbols. And the story winds on and on looking for a finish. Three or four times I reached for my coat prematurely. [17 Feb 1986, p.26]

The average user rating for this movie is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 45 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Antony C gave it a10:
Distopian, bleak, dirty, old, new and at times, funny as all get out; for those who fear for fate of the free world, this movie might just make you cry.

BOB gave it a10:
A classic cult film, if that is possible.

Ryan C. gave it a10:
A beautiful, dystopian mess.

s c gave it a7:
Close to a perfect movie but begins to lose focus as some great ideas give way to a formulaic plotline.

Flavius gave it a0:
Nothing in my opinion!!!

Paul R. gave it a10:
This film can readily be interpreted in Lacanian terms: the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real; jouissance/enjoyment as an act of rebellion or subversion; the individual imagination vs. the oppressive state. 'Brazil' is very clever and very watchable.

John Same gave it a1:
Very boring movie.

Brazil Universal Pictures

Brazil
Universal Pictures