Average Rating: 5.4/10
Reviews Counted: 21
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 9
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 3.1/10
Critic Reviews: 5
Fresh: 0 | Rotten: 5
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 4,707
Connect with Facebook and get a full-length movie from Flixster!
The gift movie added to
your Flixster Collection is...
Steve Soderbergh did a 180 degree turnaround from his debut film sex, lies, and videotape with Kafka, a stark art-film fable for literature majors. Jeremy Irons plays a fictional Franz Kafka, living in Prague in 1919. By day, Kafka works in a massive, impersonal insurance company. At night, he spends his time alone writing stories about men who turn into giant cockroaches. Although quiet and solitary, he becomes a suspect in a murder investigation conducted by Inspector Grubach (Armin
PG-13, 1 hr. 45 min.
Drama, Horror, Mystery & Suspense, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Jan 1, 1991 Wide
Dec 22, 1992
Paramount Home Video
All Critics (23) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (12) | Rotten (9) | DVD (1)
Steven Soderbergh's Kafka is a very bad well-directed movie.
Soderbergh does demonstrate again here that he's a gifted director, however unwise in his choice of project.
A movie about Franz Kafka? It's a good idea for a microsecond. Then it dissolves into a dumb proposition.
The effect is artistic, but it's also obvious when the material cried out for unsettling.
All the Kafka basics are there for the literary types to muse over and it has great entertainment value in its unpretentious playfulness.
Soderbergh's sophomore jinx, a pastiche of styles (noir, German Expressionism) and themes (creativity, personal and political oppression) at the center of which is the vastly miscast Jeremy Irons as the Jewish writer involved in a senseless murder mystery
the film has a shallow, sophomoric earnestness
Incomprehensible but interesting.
One of Soderbergh's most fascinating films.
Overwrought over long and over indulgent
Lem Dobb's script doesn't rely on comprehension or linearity, but the whole scope of the project has its compelling root.
Beautiful to look at but ever so slight.
September 24, 2006
Super Reviewer
Moody, mysterious, and measured thriller shot in beautiful black & white except for a pivotal sequence inside "the Castle." Soderbergh's best film is quite unlike any other in dropping Jeremy Irons, utterly convincing as Franz Kafka circa 1919 Prague, amidst a very Kafkaesque series of encounters. The insurance
February 10, 2010Super Reviewer
| 29% | The Vow |
| 94% | Mission: Impossible Ghost Protoc... |
| 87% | The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo |
| 28% | Underworld Awakening |
| 85% | Chronicle |
| 65% | The Woman in Black |
| 25% | This Means War |
| 94% | The Secret World of Arrietty |
| 36% | Red Tails |
| 88% | Certified Copy (Copie Conforme) |
Red Tails, This Means War
Pictures: Wes Anderson films
Video: Your friendly four minute preview
Trailer: The legend continues!