Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

It's a handsome and stimulating film, noteworthy more for its terrific acting and provocative ideas than for any kind of dark Cronenbergundian genius.

The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy

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.

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

Cronenberg's film is at once a lucid movie of ideas, a compelling narrative, and a splendidly acted love story.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey

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.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

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.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

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.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

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.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

The actors give it their all, especially Knightley, whose jaw- jutting, heavily accented and unfairly criticized portrayal gives the film its fighting spirit.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

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.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips

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.

Movieline by Stephanie Zacharek

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.

Slant Magazine by Nick Schager

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.

Variety by Justin Chang

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.

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

A Dangerous Method concerns itself primarily with sex, but what's most shocking is how conservative it turns out to be.

Boxoffice Magazine by Sara Maria Vizcarrondo

Michael Fassbender (Fishtank, Inglourious Basterds) is reliably great, severely outclassing costar Knightley's grating performance.

Observer by Rex Reed

I can't imagine what attracted these two megahunks to such a bore.

Miami Herald by René Rodríguez

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.