Average Rating: 4.9/10
Reviews Counted: 67
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 44
Though ambitious, Good stumbles in the transition from stage to screen, and Mortensen's performance isn't enough to cover its flaws.
Average Rating: 4.9/10
Critic Reviews: 16
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 11
Though ambitious, Good stumbles in the transition from stage to screen, and Mortensen's performance isn't enough to cover its flaws.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.9/5
User Ratings: 41,162
Viggo Mortensen and Jason Isaacs star in this period drama set in 1930s-era Germany, and detailing the ways in which an otherwise "good" man can be slowly seduced by dark forces. John Halder is a professor of literature. When he's not teaching, most of John's time is dedicated to looking after his neurotic wife, tending to the couple's two young children, and caring for his elderly mother, who suffers from senile dementia. Disheartened by his mother's downward spiral, John authors a novel
Sep 8, 2008 Wide
May 1, 2009
ThinkFilm
All Critics (69) | Top Critics (16) | Fresh (23) | Rotten (45) | DVD (3)
The subject -- self-deception and failure of nerve in an unjust world -- is too messy and horrible to laugh away.
Good contributes very little to a conundrum that has occupied historians and psychologists for half a century.
Good has a stagy fustiness, but it's worth seeing for Mortensen, who makes this study of a 'good German' look creepily contemporary. He shows us the horror of ignorance.
Morally speaking, everything about Good is tidily correct. But it is more a predictable parable than a full-fledged narrative.
There are some striking locations and certainly the era continues to fascinate audiences (and, particularly this year, filmmakers). Too bad, then, that this is such a disappointment -- awkwardly directed and flatly scripted.
We know just what each character will do, and exactly where each path will lead. And we're never wrong.
Bears a superficial resemblance to "The Conformist" and "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis," with their sense of dreary complacency, oppressively museum-like spaces, and curiously drab natural settings, but ultimately "Good" is less evocative
A tale illustrating the banality of evil is as timely as ever but the execution is heavy-handed and even with location filming and elaborate sets it still feels very theatrical.
Ultimately Good, like its central figure, seems to lack the courage of its convictions.
A strong cast and good starting material doesn't manage to save this unsuccessful adaptation.
By all accounts, Taylor's play was a more experimental piece than this film, in which the production values, like the acting, veer between the acceptable and the stodgy.
Not for the first time, great theatre makes for a merely adequate film.
It's a thought-provoking theme, which is rather let down by a thoroughly unconvincingly turn from Mortensen.
To its credit, Good is at least a piece with something serious to say, with little of the meretricious responsibility-deflecting that The Reader dealt in.
We're gearing up for a clunker of a climax involving musically gifted interns at the world's sprucest concentration camp. Mortensen wears it well, but this feels like very old hat.
Good's attempts to diagnose the cancerous spread of Nazi influence through Germany's population in the mid-'30s is laudable, but despite Mortensen's stoic talents Halder is just too hollow a character for this to be anything other than a vapid parable.
The point is how does a "good" man get seduced by evil? Thing is, the movie's so muted and keeps viewers at such arm's length, you cease to wonder.
It is a fine piece of acting from Mortensen, who portrays his character's weakness superbly. But Good sometimes lacks pace and direction. On balance this is an intelligent and sensitive approach to a very dark era of history.
It may have been a good stage play: people say it was. But its author, the late C.P. Taylor, was not around to stop it becoming a lousy film.
Mortensen isn't bad, though he looks merely absent-minded rather than anguished.
The original play, once dubbed one of the 100 best of the century, is fleshed out with skill by Amorim but somehow his film never comes fully to life. Even its melodramatic ending falls flat.
Despite strong performances and decent production design, Good lacks the emotional weight it needs to deliver the requisite punch. Disappointing.
Set in that weird film version of Nazi Germany full of RADA-trained Home Counties poshos, Good is, in a sense, an amazing achievement- it makes the Holocaust boring.
Viggo is an amazing actor, and this subject is definitely my favorite subject. But, for some reason, this movie just didn't hit the the right notes for me. Really slow. Rather confusing (at least to me). A decent idea with not much substance, in my opinion.
June 28, 2011Super Reviewer
I was extremely dissappointed by this film. It lacked an edge to it. It just seemed like I was following this random guys life during a difficult period in his country. It showed a lot about character and how normal innocent people of Germany really didn't know what was going on. The ending was atrocious and so
May 7, 2011Super Reviewer
| 35% | The Hangover Part II |
| 25% | Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Par... |
| 81% | Kung Fu Panda 2 |
| 44% | Cowboys & Aliens |
| 83% | Rise of the Planet of the Apes |
| 25% | Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Par... |
| 88% | Lady and the Tramp |
| 69% | A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas |
| 21% | Fireflies in the Garden |
| 45% | The Rebound |
What are his 10 best movies ever?
See the all-new action-packed trailer!
Five new Marvelous pictures
Unconventional Superheroes