A Dangerous Method
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: November 23, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
76
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
33
Mixed:
7
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyJan 12, 2012
Mostly, though, A Dangerous Method is a suave chamber piece: a series of glimpses of two 20th-century intellectual titans, in friendship and separation, and the story of a remarkable woman who history had swallowed up, brought into the light again. Read full review
100
Village VoiceJ. HobermanNov 22, 2011
Cronenberg's film is at once a lucid movie of ideas, a compelling narrative, and a splendidly acted love story. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirNov 13, 2011
It's a handsome and stimulating film, noteworthy more for its terrific acting and provocative ideas than for any kind of dark Cronenbergundian genius. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyOct 24, 2011
Precise, lucid and thrillingly disciplined, this story of boundary-testing in the early days of psychoanalysis is brought to vivid life by the outstanding lead performances of Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumNov 30, 2011
Intelligent conversation about the interplay of erotic and destructive urges takes place over cups of tea in fine bone china. Yet the movie is a radically modern story about sex. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnNov 23, 2011
In the movie's final shot, Jung's confidence crumbles and he looks supremely troubled, still uncertain of a world he once believed could be explained with textual prowess. Better than any analysis, his expression sums up the dangerous method at the heart of every Cronenberg movie. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottNov 22, 2011
Full of ideas about sexuality - some quite provocative, even a century after their first articulation - but it also recognizes and communicates the erotic power of ideas. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisDec 22, 2011
This is the best thing Mortensen's ever done. His slow, paunchy, hairy Freud has a cavalier authority and a capacity for drollery. He's also seductively wise in a way that makes both Fassbender and Knightley, as very good as they are, also seem uncharacteristically callow. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 15, 2011
The wonderful thing about Fassbender and Mortensen? Several things, actually. They're effortlessly convincing in period, and they know how to make recessive characters intriguing. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertDec 14, 2011
Using a dialogue-heavy approach that's unusual for Cronenberg, his film is skilled at the way it weaves theory with the inner lives of its characters. We are learning, yet never feel we're being taught. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversNov 21, 2011
The actors give it their all, especially Knightley, whose jaw- jutting, heavily accented and unfairly criticized portrayal gives the film its fighting spirit. Read full review
83
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJan 25, 2012
A Dangerous Method is a movie believing the most formidable sex organ really is the brain. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 21, 2011
What's surprising here, and pleasantly so, is the restraint shown by Mortensen and Fassbender -- and by Cronenberg. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternNov 28, 2011
Represents a big growth spurt in Mr. Cronenberg's career. Its measured pace, along with a style that is sometimes austere (though sometimes anything but) repays close attention with excellent acting and a wealth of absorbing information. Read full review
80
SlateDana StevensNov 23, 2011
Certainly the most genteel film Cronenberg has ever made, with period costumes worthy of Merchant/Ivory, no gore, and very little physical violence. But A Dangerous Method doesn't feel like a wimp-out or a sell-out at all. It's a fiercely thoughtful film, a movie of ideas that understands how powerful ideas can be. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfNov 22, 2011
If the movie falls just shy of our highest mark, this is because Cronenberg is tamping down on his usually naturalistic performances - everything feels vaguely mad-scientist-ish. Read full review
80
MovielineStephanie ZacharekNov 22, 2011
In short, Cronenberg has made an elegant film, with spanking. There's some mildly kinky sex in A Dangerous Method, but Cronenberg makes it neither exploitive nor so tasteful that it loses its charge. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesDec 22, 2011
It's a period piece about the origins of psychoanalysis and the sexual confusions of its progenitors that is eloquent and handsomely made, if never quite revelatory. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsJan 20, 2012
Like psychoanalysis, A Dangerous Method takes its time as it circles an opening to unexplored depths. To reward our patience, Cronenberg gives us some honey-hued eye candy and rich dialogue, but if you're seeking instant gratification, I prescribe "Shame." Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaJan 12, 2012
There's an icy chill, a detachment, to A Dangerous Method, too. Of course, there are no talking cockroaches (Naked Lunch), no naked steambath knife fights (Eastern Promises), and that may have something to do with why this all feels so un-Cronenbergian. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJan 9, 2012
Ultimately, however, A Dangerous Method is less about the formative years of psychotherapy and two of its progenitors than it is about a rule-breaking extramarital affair. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn LevyDec 22, 2011
Because nothing says 'holiday fun' quite like an intellectual struggle between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung peppered with a few vivid episodes of S-&-M sex, voila A Dangerous Method. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 15, 2011
Mortensen has called A Dangerous Method Cronenberg's "Merchant-Ivory picture," but it just as often resembles a Woody Allen movie - literate, sophisticated and deeply concerned with sex and manners. (It's even mordantly funny, as an early scene at the Freud family dinner table attests.) Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickNov 23, 2011
Gorgeously photographed by Peter Suschitzky, A Dangerous Method presents a vivid portrait of pre-World War I Europe that's at a considerable remove from the types of madness usually seen in Cronenberg's films. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineNick SchagerSep 26, 2011
As rigorous and stimulating as its thematic inquiries are, A Dangerous Method ultimately rests as much on its performances, and in that regard, it succeeds far more than it fails. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 27, 2011
That wordiness coupled with Cronenberg's classical restraint is part of the splendid Freudian joke at the movie's center. Read full review
70
NPRMark JenkinsNov 23, 2011
The clinical style doesn't play to the director's strengths. A Dangerous Method didn't have to be another "Naked Lunch," but Freud plus Jung plus Cronenburg should have equaled something a little more dissonant and troubling. Read full review
70
TimeRichard CorlissNov 22, 2011
In his third consecutive Cronenberg film (after playing the righteous killers of A History of Violence and Eastern Promises), Mortensen is a happy surprise. Never has this tightly-wound actor seemed so relaxed in a difficult role; he is the charming papa Jung hates to overthrow but knows he must. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranNov 22, 2011
It's fascinating to see the exceptionally charismatic Fassbender squeeze himself into the role of the aristocratic, restrained Jung, and it's just as enjoyable to see Mortensen bring an unexpected virility to his sybaritic, cigar-chomping Freud. Read full review
70
VarietyJustin ChangNov 13, 2011
This complex story from the early days of psychoanalysis engrosses and even amuses as it unfolds through a series of conversations, treatment sessions and exchanged letters. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerNov 23, 2011
Low point would be Knightley's hysterical opening sequences in which she appears to be trying to trying to contort herself into a Moebius strip. Overacting this gross can only have been enabled by a director. Didn't Cronenberg look at the rushes? Or did he think he was back in "Dead Ringers" territory? Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsNov 22, 2011
Spielrein's name is less familiar than the others, but the film suggests she deserves to be more than a footnote in the history of psychoanalysis. Read full review
63
USA TodayScott BowlesNov 22, 2011
A Dangerous Method has plenty to say about sex, but it lacks much fire for it. Read full review
60
EmpireWilliam ThomasFeb 6, 2012
Despite a top-notch cast performing well, and bravely in the case of Knightley, this is an austere, somewhat repressed movie. It never really gets under the skin in the way Cronenberg does at his best. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanNov 22, 2011
A Dangerous Method concerns itself primarily with sex, but what's most shocking is how conservative it turns out to be. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazineSara Maria VizcarrondoNov 13, 2011
Michael Fassbender (Fishtank, Inglourious Basterds) is reliably great, severely outclassing costar Knightley's grating performance. Read full review
50
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJan 27, 2012
A Dangerous Method still feels as if it's based on a rather pedestrian narrative --and so, in the final analysis, Cronenberg's film bores. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 15, 2011
Instead we get Knightley, who juts her chin, quakes, shakes and bugs her eyes, but nothing about her pain calls out to us, because nothing in it seems real. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesDec 15, 2011
Never really delivers on that promise, mainly because its scenes of two brilliant men discussing the nature of the subconscious can't compare with Cronenberg's visual rendering of that subconscious in earlier movies. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedNov 22, 2011
I can't imagine what attracted these two megahunks to such a bore. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezOct 27, 2011
Even a supporting turn by Vincent Cassell as Otto Gross, a fellow psychiatrist, cocaine addict and unapologetic adulterer, fails to enliven the movie: A Dangerous Method makes even a cokehead hedonist boring. Read full review
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