Boarding Gate Reviews

Distills genre tropes (and their consequent pleasures) to their lean, potent essence.

Full Review | Original Score: A-

When all the nonsense of Boarding Gate ends, only Asia remains in memory. She can light up the best and the worst of 'em.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

As for Argento ... yeah, she's got something. Now we'd like to see her in a movie that makes sense.

| Original Score: 2/4

What it all means is up for grabs, but for connoisseurs of sadomasochistic nastiness, it's a must-see.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

The main thing interesting about Boarding Gate is the spectacle of Assayas' effort -- the attitude and the international backdrop -- not the story itself.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

In the "B" movie days, a story like this would shoot by in about 70 minutes without time to pick holes in the motives. But Assayas takes a bloated, boring 106 minutes.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Could have been an exciting and inventive film, if only it weren't so bland and familiar.

Full Review | Original Score: c+

Like just about everything in Boarding Gate, the finale suggests that its creators have been watching too many other movies with similar premises and payoffs.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

The plot may be murky, but actress Asia Argento is a clear and commanding force throughout.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

[Assayas] has concocted a plot that is dizzying and annoying at times, and it's hard to care about the characters in the shifting story. But B-movie veteran Argento's portrayal of Sandra is like watching a car careening down an incline.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Writer-director Olivier Assayas must have been working out some personal demons to make something as embarrassing as Boarding Gate, the most trite and trivial piece of sleaze since Abel Ferrara's Snake Eyes.

Full Review | Original Score: C

Boring gate.

Full Review

There are long, droning bouts of dialog about nothing meant to link scenes together, but all Boarding Gate really does is fixate on watching Asia Argento do stuff.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

This hypnotic, angular thriller about sex, murder, betrayal and money takes you on a feverish journey from nowhere to somewhere.

Full Review

A ridiculous poseur thriller that seems to be made up of the slow moments from Hong Kong action films and Euro-flashy stuff like Run Lola Run.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

The latest entry in this perplexing preoccupation with lowlifes is Boarding Gate, an astonishingly un-thrilling thriller.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Seriously flawed and not for every taste, the film was shot quickly and on the cheap, and is driven by Argento's slurred, scratchy voice and Bette David eyes.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Even an ultra-feral performance by Asia Argento -- the art house Angelina Jolie -- isn't enough to suffer through Boarding Gate, a draggy and incoherent thriller by French director Oliver Assayas.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

absolutely silly

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

We don't want to see Asia Argento talking about her history of drugs and wild sex, we want to see her doing it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5