Crimson Gold

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Iranian director Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold is an anti-blockbuster--a deceptively modest undertaking that brilliantly combines unpretentious humanism and impeccable formal values.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

It's a troubling, courageous, compulsively watchable work of art.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

This is the first beautiful performance in the year's first great movie.

San Francisco Chronicle Jonathan Curiel

An engrossing tale of class differences that reveals tiny details of one man’s descent into hell.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Provides one of the rare glimpses of the upper class to come out of recent Iranian cinema--the last one in memory was 1996's exquisite, Ibsen-esque melodrama "Leila"--and director Jafar Panahi (The Circle) captures it vividly through his hero's wounded obsession.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Kiarostami's brilliantly suggestive script, which is quite unlike anything else he's written and is marred only slightly by one of his obligatory sages turning up gratuitously near the beginning.

The Hollywood Reporter Richard James Havis

A flawlessly executed character study.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

An extraordinary film in many ways, the least of which is its unorthodox casting.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

As in "Taxi Driver," the protagonist is a damaged war veteran, an invisible man who travels about the city and internalizes its contradictions until he explodes.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It settles into the typical reflective mode of Iranian films, but something IS happening: A human being is slowly, sullenly, silently approaching his combustion point.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A stark, minimalist near-masterpiece about the creation of a murderer in modern Iran.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

As with many Iranian films, reality and fiction collide (the lead actor really is a pizza deliveryman), and the moral of the story is a surprisingly blunt critique of the growing inequality of wealth in the slowly Westernizing nation.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

The result is the work of a funereal yet darkly funny neorealist, sounding the rallying cry against the inflexible maxim casually delivered by one of his own film's characters.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Unfolds with a marvelously understated humanism.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

Through everyday actions and gestures -- in Hussein's awkward exchanges with other people, in his tender fumbling of his fiancée's purse -- Panahi shows a man for whom life has become increasingly arduous, alien. The filmmaker captures, in other words, what Bresson called "the force in the air before the storm."

Variety Lisa Nesselson

Succeeds as a universal account of frustration applicable to any urban center where the gap between haves and have-nots is tauntingly visible.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Another excellent example of how Iranian cinema uses deceptively simple techniques to decode devastating truths about human nature.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Crimson Gold has been likened to an Iranian "Taxi Driver," but it's nothing of the sort, though it is powerful in a quiet, minimalist way.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The success of Crimson Gold depends to an intriguing degree on the performance of its leading actor, a large, phlegmatic man.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The occasional obviousness of the film's themes is more than balanced by the subtlety of its methods and by the stolid, irreducible individuality of its protagonist, Hussein.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Its characters are no different from the rest of us, in the cluster of their annoyances and kicks, yet utterly removed from us by a system that frowns upon ordinary desire. Jafar Panahi's movie, unsurprisingly, has been outlawed in Iran. Nobody likes a prophet. [19 January 2004, p. 93]

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Not a great film, but a good one.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A fable of money as the root of jealousy, discord, violence, but the film's slippery fascination as sociological exposé is the flip side of its thinness as drama.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

There's a subtlety to Crimson Gold that deserves applause.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Watching it is like getting a peek behind the curtain. But it's frustrating, too, because the casting of Emadeddin as a murderer-in-the-making precludes any psychological depth. And as an indictment of social inequality, which is the film's calling card, Panahi inadvertantly makes a far better case for the haves than for the have-nots.

TV Guide Staff (Not Credited)

Though it unfolds like a thriller, it's ultimately a tragedy.