The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Name: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
Genre: Adventure, Sci-Fi, Drama, Fantasy, Comedy
Released: April 10, 2019
Duration: 132 min
Rating: 58
Cast: Adam Driver, Ismael Fritschi, Jason Watkins, Jonathan Pryce, Jordi Mollà

2019

METASCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 25 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 46 Ratings

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6.8

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6.8	Your Score
6.8	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 46 Ratings

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The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (US Trailer 1)

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Movie Details & Credits

Warner Bros. | Release Date: April 10, 2019 | Not Rated

Starring: Adam Driver, Ismael Fritschi, Jason Watkins, Jonathan Pryce, Jordi Mollà, José Luis Ferrer, Juan López-Tagle, Olga Kurylenko, Óscar Jaenada, Paloma Bloyd, Rossy de Palma, Sergi López, Sonia Franco, Stellan Skarsgård, Will Keen, William Miller

Summary: Toby (Adam Driver) enters a world of time jumping fantasy when he meets "Don Quixote" (Jonathan Pryce), a delusional Spanish cobbler who believes Toby to be Sancho Panza. They embark on an epic adventure where dreams and reality intertwine.

Director: Terry Gilliam

Genre(s): Adventure, Sci-Fi, Drama, Fantasy, Comedy

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 132 min

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Critic Reviews

Bilge Ebiri

May 24, 2018

It is an uncompromising work that will make many viewers frustrated and even furious. I adored pretty much every single glorious, gorgeous goddamn minute of it. Read full review

Rafael Motamayor

Oct 10, 2018

Does The Man Who Killed Don Quixote live up to the anticipation built by a nearly 30 year-long wait? Probably not. Is it still a film worth seeing, with something to say about following your dreams and being a filmmaker, with meta commentary about its own production? It’s hard not to say yes, if only to witness a man’s decades-long obsession finally bear fruit. Read full review

A.O. Scott

Apr 18, 2019

Has moments of slackness and chaos (the book does, too), but for the most part it’s a lively, charming excursion. Read full review

The Telegraph Robbie Collin

May 19, 2018

Even when the film feels like a circuitous, effortful mess, it’s often an intentional one – and for everything in the film that doesn’t quite connect, that element of self-portraiture, with the artist as sap, strikes a wistful chord. Read full review

Empire Ian Freer

Jan 27, 2020

Neither a splendid phoenix from the ashes nor a complete failure, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is erratic, occasionally inspired, occasionally dull, but shot through with a grandiose sense of ambition. Plus, Driver and Pryce add some magic along the way. Read full review

Chris Nashawaty

Apr 12, 2019

With Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce now in the roles once occupied by Johnny Depp and the late Jean Rochefort, Don Quixote turns out to be a pretty typical Gilliam film: whimsically daffy, frantically overstuffed, and art-directed to within in an inch of its life. It’s often transporting, but even more often exhausting. Read full review

David Rooney

May 18, 2018

Large-scale filmmaking of this kind to some degree is probably always an adventurer's folly, with an unhinged visionary tilting at windmills in a valiant quest to tame fantasy and reality into companionable travelers that will live forever. But rarely have such brave deeds yielded so meager a reward. Read full review

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User Reviews

jfrisby

Jul 11, 2019

Really enjoyed this - feels like one of the only films trying to be imaginative and challenging in the last few years (at least in English).. a reminder of what film can be. Thanks Terry!

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Beowulf4862

Apr 11, 2019

Wonderful, frustrating, amusing film. Despite hearing of its long gestation, I really knew very little of the actual plot. The movie is confusing at times and overlong, but is nonetheless delightful fun. Twenty-five years of waiting may have pumped expectations too high, but the film--whileWonderful, frustrating, amusing film. Despite hearing of its long gestation, I really knew very little of the actual plot. The movie is confusing at times and overlong, but is nonetheless delightful fun. Twenty-five years of waiting may have pumped expectations too high, but the film--while no masterpiece--delivers the goods.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

hnestlyonthesly

Oct 7, 2019

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. My Friend has been nagging me to sit down and watch this film about Don Quixote with him for weeks and weeks, and I was skeptical. I don’t have a really good bead on his taste, beyond original, standalone sci-fi and action films. He doesn’t like art house pictures or indie movies about quirky teens most of the time, so I assumed that he was trying to watch this one to prep for one of his classes. This is probably the last time that I’ll underestimate his ability to sniff out the perfect weekday movie.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is a dream, a pet project of many years from the mind of Monty Python’s own Terry Gilliam, and starring the world’s most gangly Adam Driver alongside “that guy who was the bad guy in that Bond movie” aka Jonathan Pryce (apparently he’s also in GoT, but I have no idea). The female leads Olga Kurylenko and Joana Ribeiro are electric and dynamic, emotional whipsaws and excellent facsimiles of sexy sheep (at one point). Without giving too much, or any of the plot, I can just say that my image of the film without ever having seen the trailer and barely having seen a poster for this film (which has apparently been living in production purgatory for months if not years?), was that of the image above, a simple retelling of the Don Quixote story with maybe some big name actors to draw an audience. Within the first two minutes of the movie, that expectation was turned on its head and that head was split open, as if by a windmill.

At the one hour mark, Friend’s colleague asked how much more time there was for the movie and we checked and both of us were speechless. What had felt like the first two thirds of the film had barely registered as the first act–“What more could happen?” I cried. “How many more places could they go?” he screamed. “They’ve already been taken in by secret Muslims,” I shouted, at which point his colleague told us to quiet down or we’d wake the baby. We weren’t lamenting how slow the movie’s pacing was. I think we just couldn’t picture in which direction it could be gaining momentum.

We sometimes describe this element of plot unknowability as “tumbly,” as in “I like how the storyline tumbled along,” as opposed to one that sits within the tight confines of a genre film. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is fully in control of its free-fall, and I’m sure that if I were to give it a second viewing that it would seem a lot more organized than it felt on first watch.

The elements of magical realism and unreliable narration were well-crafted and alternately humorous and disquieting. Adam Driver’s triumph was finding a dozen different ways of using the phrase “holy **** **** Pryce speechifies trippingly in his grandiloquent screenplay patois and his final scene is gripping cinema.

Whenever this film makes it to your theater/festival/streaming site of choice, give it a look see. It’s more than it first appears.… Expand

2 of 2 users found this helpful20

frederik1478

Jul 7, 2020

I enjoyed it but I think this is a movie who is going to lay in your mind and just Become better the more you think about it, It looks really good and was really good shots

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Ralfbergs

Oct 13, 2020

I like it. Even though at the beginning seemed like it will end up being a bit boring or felt like it is a bit misleading, but later got sucked into the story and it got interesting and overall I liked it, even though nothing so impressive to give it higher rating

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Tyranian

Dec 24, 2019

Despite being totally nonsensical in many ways, it kinda works on some level.

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

Elthor

Jun 26, 2019

TMWKDQ gets off to a solid start with snappy dialog and a great setup. At that point it looks like it's going to become the most 'normal' of Terry Gilliam's films.

By the middle we are aware that something odd is going on. The movie is still entertaining, but a few forced coincidencesTMWKDQ gets off to a solid start with snappy dialog and a great setup. At that point it looks like it's going to become the most 'normal' of Terry Gilliam's films.

By the middle we are aware that something odd is going on. The movie is still entertaining, but a few forced coincidences start to feel problematic and you start to question the filmmaker, not the mystery of the strange occurrences.

In the third act, when we see this WON'T be Gilliam's most normal film, is when everything goes off the rails. The film's momentum stalls, strange things become more important than moving the story along, and by the end events aren't confusing so much as questionably arrived at.

Of course Terry has to pull us out of the movie once just to virtue signal and let us know that the Orange Man is bad. The fairy tale is unnecessarily dragged into the harsh light of 2019 reality.

TMWKDQ could have been really good, but if it's not great after 25 years, it never would have been.… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

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