Your Company
 

The Dancer Upstairs

✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Spain, United States · 2002
Rated R · 2h 12m
Director John Malkovich
Starring Javier Bardem, Juan Diego Botto, Laura Morante, Elvira Mínguez
Genre Crime, Drama, Romance, Thriller

Agustin Rejas, a policeman, faces the greatest challenge of his career -- he tries to catch the leader of a terrorist movement while being stopped at every turn by his own corrupt superiors. As his mission becomes more difficult, he falls in love with his daughter's ballet teacher. Rejas must choose between his heart, his country, and his well-being.

Stream The Dancer Upstairs

What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

80

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

The Dancer Upstairs, is a haunting and often beautiful work, part doomed romance and part political thriller, that demonstrates the adult command of the medium Malkovich has always demonstrated as an actor.

80

Slate by David Edelstein

The film has a foggy cast to it--flat and insinuatingly creepy, like the actor. But then it can be lit, in an instant, by searing flash-pots of cruelty and wit. Even when it's slightly opaque, it's transfixing.

63

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey

The movie is often both smart and creepy, but it's still a novice effort. After an initially engrossing start, it stumbles through a series of implausible coincidences and murky events, barely held together by the magnetic performance of Javier Bardem.

40

Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov

Falters in small but important ways -– the suspense, carefully ratcheted up throughout, just plain goes busto in the film’s final moments -– while Malkovich stays resolutely behind the camera, a consummate professional who, this time, misses his mark by the merest of degrees.

75

USA Today by Mike Clark

It has an elusive, haunting quality, but it's too long at 133 minutes, and there aren't many movies these days that get more involving as they progress.

90

Time by Richard Schickel

Patient and plodding -- but as realized by John Malkovich, in his directorial debut, utterly absorbing.

63

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

Far from perfect but completely unique, the film could best be described as a paranoid South American metaphysical political thriller -- you heard me -- and whatever its failures, they're not ones of nerve or imagination.

Users who liked this film also liked