Being Flynn Reviews

De Niro has succumbed to the false perception that 'great acting' is synonymous with screaming and yelling every line like your career depended on it.

Full Review | Original Score: D

Being Flynn is too dark to appeal to the faint of heart and too safe to draw in those looking for an honest portrayal of a troubled father-son relationship.

Full Review | Original Score: 5.5/10

It's a shame the studio didn't choose to keep the original title of the book in place, Another Bulls**t Night in Suck City would have been quite fitting for the film.

Full Review | Original Score: D-

Eventually, the movie warps in on itself and becomes its own parody: an overly pretentious movie about an overly pretentious writer, which is not very well written at all.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5

Absolves Paul Weitz for having made Little Fockers and makes up for most of Robert De Niro's choices in the past few years.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

Paul Weitz's gritty, sweet but mostly unsentimental film of Flynn's book puts a flawed, unpleasantly realistic face on homelessness and gives Robert De Niro his best role in a decade.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

On the whole, the film feels detached and morose, just like its characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

De Niro's Jonathan wraps himself up in the façade of his fictitious artistry. He's Jake La Motta by way of Blanche DuBois, who can only occasionally depend upon the kindness of strangers.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10

It's been ages since De Niro tackled a character as rich and challenging as this, and he tackles it head-on.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

De Niro's blustering doesn't help and neither does the sentimental take on his possibly insoluble problems.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

It's simply difficult to throw in with the film's reality-if not its essential story, then its details: Being Flynn feels indie art-directed instead of observed.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

To his credit, De Niro actually gives a committed performance for a change. But that doesn't mean what it once did.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

...a perfectly watchable adaptation of Flynn's true-life memoir.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Never underestimate the dramatic power of father-son bonding

Full Review

He might be guilty of showboating, but De Niro's knockout performance is a declaration that the star of "Raging Bull" isn't ready to hang up his gloves.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

The revelation, truly, is De Niro. It's been ages since he's dived fully and credibly into a dramatic character and lived inside its skin as he used to do routinely.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

Weitz digs diligently for emotional truths and makes the most of his excellent cast.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

I'm happy to report that De Niro hasn't lost his chops. At least not quite.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

It's a complex emotional soup, taken from a 2004 book by poet Nick Flynn, and one that demands much from all involved.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Heads downward in every sense of the word.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4