The Observer (UK) by Wendy Ide

The stark beauty of Florian Ballhaus’s black-and-white cinematography and painterly framing can’t conceal the ugliness that unfolds as the death toll mounts and Herold starts to believe his own grotesque creation.

Screen Daily by Wendy Ide

It’s a powerful, profoundly uncomfortable watch.

The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis

The Captain, Robert Schwentke’s harrowing World War II psychodrama, isn’t what you would call enjoyable, exactly. More accurately, it compels our attention with a remorseless, gripping single-mindedness, presenting Naziism as a communicable disease that smothers conscience, paralyzes resistance and extinguishes all shreds of humanity.

Screen International by Wendy Ide

It’s a powerful, profoundly uncomfortable watch.

Film Journal International by Lisa Jo Sagolla

Schwentke’s delectable drama is ultimately a keen indictment of the stereotypical German affinity for efficiency and the sense of community born of bonding together in the hurting of others.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

It is a horrifying parable, with chilling moments, although the story is structurally uneven.

Austin Chronicle by Richard Whittaker

Does the man make the uniform, or does the uniform make the man? Schwentke's conclusion is as dark as you may fear.

The A.V. Club by Katie Rife

The film is consistently beautiful to look at in an “industrial metal album cover” kind of way, pairing dimly lit, black-and-white cinematography and artfully composed mise-en-scéne.

Variety by Peter Debruge

Few and far between are the movies...that actually implicate modern viewers in the evil, which is precisely what makes The Captain such a remarkable film. Not a great one, mind you — the movie starts out with a bang but swiftly falls into a kind of prolonged and distressingly outlandish tedium, and lodges there for the better part of its rather taxing running time — but a brave and uncompromising indictment of human nature, Teutonic or otherwise.

Film Threat

The film-craft is high quality, with the passion and care taken evident. Schwentke brings the brutal winter during wartime to realistic life. If you have historical interest in deep details of the war, or are fascinated by psychopathic war criminals, this might be a film for you.

Village Voice by April Wolfe

Filmed in black and white in the wintry countryside of Görlitz, Germany, Schwentke’s vision of a man who would be posthumously named the Executioner of Emsland is chilling and yet, at times, almost farcical.

Film Threat by Bradley Gibson

The film-craft is high quality, with the passion and care taken evident. Schwentke brings the brutal winter during wartime to realistic life. If you have historical interest in deep details of the war, or are fascinated by psychopathic war criminals, this might be a film for you.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

It’s too bleak to laugh at and too absurd to cry over. That it’s true adds another insanity-inducing element.

The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy

The central premise is arresting, as is the style, but there's a lot more that could have been done with it than just show how one ill-defined individual instantly opts to join his country's lowest form of life.

RogerEbert.com by Glenn Kenny

Outlandish as its action often is, The Captain is based on a true story. Schwentke’s film, though, has an allegorical/satirical axe to grind, and it more often than not frames the narrative in dark archetypal terms.

Slant Magazine by Chuck Bowen

In one fashion, Robert Schwentke proves to be too complicit with his protagonist, regarding evil and human banality as stimulation.