50
Kazakh cinema's stalwart auteur Darzhan Omirbaev adapts Crime and Punishment to modern-day Almaty, but with little to say beyond the obvious.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
A sense of existential dread that would make the Russkie novelist beam is channeled beautifully, but for a filmmaker lauded for his minimalist aesthetic, Omirbayev sure loves broad-stroke symbolism and sloganeering.
70
There’s much to admire in the film’s elegantly classical tempo and the way Omirbayev achieves so much with so little.
80
The New York Times by Nicolas Rapold
It’s the no-nonsense filmmaking, seamlessly integrating even dreams and visions, that keeps us fixed on the bold line of the student’s trajectory, all the way through to a transcendent ending.
40
The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Dalton
Omirbaev fails to invest either the murder plot or its political subtext with much suspense or conviction.