Tony Manero (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:28
Fresh:24
Rotten:4
Average Rating:6.8/10
Consensus: Deliberately provocative, Tony Manero is as challenging and compelling as it is difficult to describe.
Theatrical Release:Jul 3, 2009 Limited
Synopsis: Chilean director Pablo Lorrain's TONY MANERO is a film that has very few cinematic precedents, if any. Establishing a tone of its daringly original own, it somehow manages to be three things at... [More]
Starring: Alfredo Castro, Amparo Noguera, Paola Lattus, Hector Morales
Director: Pablo Larrain
Reviews for Tony Manero
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 B |
Alfredo Castro is magnetically repellant in the lead, a soulful creep with desperation and a very specific form of madness seeping out of his pores. Full Review |
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B+ |
Larrain's (literally) dark, edgy movie is a precise artistic commentary on Augusto Pinochet's miserable regime, which was under way while Travolta gyrated. Full Review |
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4/5 |
Larrain evokes the bleakness and oppressiveness of life in a police state with much subtlety even as he poses a much larger question about cultural imperialism. Full Review |
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3/5 |
Larrain’s consciously raw execution in telling the story of a compelling but ultimately unsavory character is an id-bending exercise in provocation that’s both competent and challenging. Full Review |
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 5/10 |
Could this be ... art? Full Review |
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3.5/4 |
Shot with a hand-held camera and presented in a fragmented scenario, Tony Manero is the director's compelling attempt to find parallels between the Pinochet reign of terror and Raúl's scruple-less antics. Full Review |
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A memorably claustrophobic evocation of its time and place, as well as a reminder that the so-called escape offered by pop culture can sometimes be an escape into soul-sucking madness. Full Review |
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4/5 |
More than an indelible portrait of a sociopath with the soul of a zombie, Tony Manero is an extremely dark meditation on borrowed cultural identity. Full Review |
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B- |
Perhaps best appreciated as a deadpan dark comedy about how ignorance, delusion, and selfishness can conspire to keep a people under the bootheels of a dictatorship. Full Review |
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4/5 |
Films are, in a way, just collective fantasies... and, in some cases, nightmares Full Review |
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A distortion of the historical record that is irresponsible and reprehensible. And a display of deplorable disregard by the director as irreverent whim for irreverence's sake, for the many who suffered and perished from Pinochet's crimes against humanity. Full Review |
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Cinephilia -- the smart-about-movies concept about the love of film -- has been so distorted in contemporary movie culture that it has led to the repugnant Chilean film Tony Manero. Full Review |
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4/5 |
[Director] Larrain deftly employs a Dardennes-style in-the-moment handheld lensing, managing a high-wire act in which audience disgust is outpaced by breathless anticipation. Full Review |
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B |
Remarkable Chilean actor Alfredo Castro portrays a sleaze-bag standing in for people desperate psychologically to escape from dictator General Pinochet's brutality. Full Review |
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3/4 |
Larrain's film is primarily a character study of Raul, an unpleasant but unforgettable man who is part "King of Comedy" Robert DeNiro, part "Cape Fear" DeNiro. Full Review |
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Tony Manero has a purposefully murky look and a frantic feel. Full Review |
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2/5 |
Deeply unedifying, but it has some moves. Full Review |
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3/5 |
Director Pablo Larrain, aided by a quietly compelling performance from co-screenwriter Alfredo Castro as Raul, is clearly commenting not only on a kind of celebrity fetishism. Full Review |
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This allegory of national failure is down and dirty in every sense. Full Review |
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3/5 |
It’s intriguing and challenging, although Castro’s Raúl never quite comes to full-blooded life, remaining a brittle vessel for the points Larrain seeks to score. Full Review |
CommentLatest News for Tony Manero
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