Upcoming Release Calendar
67
2 Days in Paris Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies. |
Reversal of Fortune
|
|
MPAA RATING: R
Starring Glenn Close, Jeremy Irons, Ron Silver, Annabella Sciorra, Uta Hagen, Fisher Stevens, Jack Gilpin, and Christine Baranski
Jeremy Irons plays socialite Claus von Bulow, seeking legal exoneration in the most sensational attempted murder scandal of the 1980s. (Warner Bros.)
GENRE(S): | Drama |
WRITTEN BY: |
Nicholas Kazan
Alan M. Dershowitz (book) |
DIRECTED BY: | Barbet Schroeder |
RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: March 13, 2001 Video: June 26, 1991 Theatrical: October 17, 1990 |
RUNNING TIME: | 111 minutes, Color |
ORIGIN: | USA |
Jeremy Irons won the best Actor Oscar at the 1991 Academy Awards. The film also received Academy Award nomiations for Best Director and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. Jeremy Iron won the 1991 Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama.
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The average user rating for this movie is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Brendan H. gave it a9:
I've watched RofV six times and I never get tired of it. Never get tired of Ron Silver's vastly underrated performance, Jeremy Irons' introverted despair, Glenn Close's intoxicating mix of rage and ennui. The film confronts our assumptions of the "whodunnit" and turns them on their head. In RoV, as in life, we can't always come to definite conclusions to what happened, or why; whether a man is good, evil, or lives in some point in between. Doesn't deserve to be mentioned with "The Godfather", but I love this movie. I think I'll watch it another six times.
Hansel H. gave it a7:
No. 9 on the all time metacritic list? No way. Not a bad movie. But highly overrated.
Eric S. gave it a5:
What am I missing here? How is this movie a 93 and one of the highest scores on Metacritic?? This is an AVERAGE movie people. The screenplay is poor. I found myself totally uninterested in the outcome of this movie. And how can such a simple plot be so complicated to understand? As for Glenn Close, this was one of her more disappointing acting jobs if you ask me. Notice how she speaks with a British accent during narration, but in the actual acting scenes she loses the accent completely. That was very annoying to me. Oh and the musical score is just forgettable. It was paper thin and did nothing for the movie, which could have used some intensification. I do give this movie a 5 because Irons is stellar as usual, but the real star of this film is Ron Silver.
Mike N. gave it a 7:
Irons is great. Like Hopkins in Silence of Lambs, he comes across as so intelligent and witty that he makes you like von Bulow, in spite of the fact that you really, really don't want to like Claus von Bulow. Close is excellent too. Silver does a good job, but the Dershowitz sections have an annoying "made for TV movie" quality about them that brings down the whole tone of the picture.
Pat C. gave it a 7:
96? No, it's not that good.
Rod P. gave it a 5:
Is it fair to rate this film so lowly when I found myself only occasionally interested enough to raise my head from latest issue of The Economist? Perhaps not. Needless to say Reversal of Fortune, was for me, an entirely underwhelming experience. Irons and Close are great - no surprise there. The clear weakness was Dershowitz and his little friends. Oh dear. Not only are the characters painful, but the performances are, without exception, unmemorable. Having seen the film on the strength of the American reviews listed above I can only begin to speculate that in 1990 the "Amercian justice fantasy overwhelms reality malaise" swept unabated across the writing community in virtually all American cities. Try this film again in 2003 and I think we'd be looking at 50/100.
Yoon C. gave it a 6:
Has fine performances by Irons and Close. However, we all know what a egomaniacal public relations masturbator Alan Dershawitz is. Does anyone really need to lend him a hand? Throughout the movie Dershawitz acts like he's taken on a financially rewarding case to pay for the defense of two black kids facing death row. In reality, the kids were white but this is the kind of lowly manipulation(and prejudice--is it nobler to save black than white kids' lives?)this rank movie revels in. The funniest thing is the only truly likable character is the rich creep played by Irons.
Return to top of page |