90
A flawlessly executed character study.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
Its characters are no different from the rest of us, in the cluster of their annoyances and kicks, yet utterly removed from us by a system that frowns upon ordinary desire. Jafar Panahi's movie, unsurprisingly, has been outlawed in Iran. Nobody likes a prophet. [19 January 2004, p. 93]
70
The New York Times by Dana Stevens
The occasional obviousness of the film's themes is more than balanced by the subtlety of its methods and by the stolid, irreducible individuality of its protagonist, Hussein.
100
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
It's a troubling, courageous, compulsively watchable work of art.
100
Iranian director Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold is an anti-blockbuster--a deceptively modest undertaking that brilliantly combines unpretentious humanism and impeccable formal values.
75
New York Daily News by Jami Bernard
Another excellent example of how Iranian cinema uses deceptively simple techniques to decode devastating truths about human nature.
75
New York Post by Jonathan Foreman
Crimson Gold has been likened to an Iranian "Taxi Driver," but it's nothing of the sort, though it is powerful in a quiet, minimalist way.
80
Succeeds as a universal account of frustration applicable to any urban center where the gap between haves and have-nots is tauntingly visible.
60
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer
Watching it is like getting a peek behind the curtain. But it's frustrating, too, because the casting of Emadeddin as a murderer-in-the-making precludes any psychological depth. And as an indictment of social inequality, which is the film's calling card, Panahi inadvertantly makes a far better case for the haves than for the have-nots.
90
Provides one of the rare glimpses of the upper class to come out of recent Iranian cinema--the last one in memory was 1996's exquisite, Ibsen-esque melodrama "Leila"--and director Jafar Panahi (The Circle) captures it vividly through his hero's wounded obsession.