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The Big Picture

Play trailer Poster for The Big Picture 2010 1h 54m Drama Mystery & Thriller Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
86% Tomatometer 43 Reviews 63% Popcornmeter 1,000+ Ratings
A successful lawyer with a perfect life murders his wife's lover and assumes his identity. He flees to an isolated part of Yugoslavia where he gets another shot at being himself and seeing the big picture.

Critics Reviews

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Calvin Wilson St. Louis Post-Dispatch 12/07/2012
3/4
"The Big Picture" ends perhaps a bit too ambiguously, but there's something refreshing about its faith in the moviegoer's intelligence. Go to Full Review
Moira MacDonald Seattle Times 11/30/2012
3/4
Director Eric Lartigau tells the story slowly, less interested in suspense than in character. Go to Full Review
Walter V. Addiego San Francisco Chronicle 11/21/2012
3/4
Takes familiar material - involving a violent crime and an assumed identity - and nudges it just enough to keep us interested for most of the ride. Go to Full Review
Keith Garlington Keith & the Movies 08/19/2022
4/5
A stirring and thought-provoking picture driven by a brilliant performance from Romain Duris. It asks more questions than it answers and allows the audience to wrestle with the rights and wrongs. I like that. Go to Full Review
Kaleem Aftab The List 11/06/2018
4/5
As a study of a man pushed to the edge and unable to run away from himself, The Big Picture is as fascinating as it is slow-burning. Go to Full Review
Joseph Walsh CineVue 08/24/2018
2/5
The Big Picture disappoints, leading you to feel that you should perhaps have been owed so much more. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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10/17/2020 Will surprisingly grab you as you are sucked up in the selfish moves of a seemingly boring lawyer as he ends up on the edge of survival See more 11/03/2014 Great suspense, well acted, the images were well constructed...... See more 07/19/2014 loved this story of how easily life can change, making the wrong choices etc .. See more 02/08/2014 A film that makes you wonder about circumstantially leaving riches, career and children behind to be a photographer in war-torn Serbia, living on a 100euro/month rental in the middle of nowhere. For much of the movie, one keeps asking, "why?" but by the abrupt end one can only conclude: "if so, why not sooner?" See more 02/08/2014 Duris gave a brilliant performance in this intense and complex drama of self discovery and narcissism. The cinematography was beautifully dreamy and poetically realistic at the same time. See more jesse o @RT12547577 01/25/2014 This a pretty damn good psychological thriller/character study of a man who, strangely enough, starts to live the life he always wanted to as a photographer, but didn't in order to provide for his family, after accidentally murdering his wife's lover and escaping the law by pretending to be him and faking his own death. The film sees the downward spiral his life takes as he's haunted by the guilt of killing this guy and the fact that he will never see his family ever again. But, at the same time, this torture he puts himself is totally self-imposed. There is no reason he couldn't have, if he had thought about it logically, admitted that this was all an accident as Greg, his wife's lover, kept pushing, prodding and provoking Paul even after as he was trying to leave after finding out the truth. It's kinda hard to feel sympathy for Greg, because there's no real reason for him to say the things he did and he only chose to do so to rub in the fact that his wife doesn't love him anymore and how Paul gave up on his real passion. It's certainly hard to feel sorry for Greg and his eventual downfall, but at the same time Paul really shouldn't have tortured himself the way he did. Particularly not for Greg being a massive asshole and even less for a woman who didn't love him and felt the need to sneak around his back to have this affair. But, at the same time, he wasn't thinking logically and not that you can blame him in the situation that he finds himself in. By doing what he did, I think he makes his life more complicated. Maybe by pretending to be his wife's lover, that he'd feel closer to her than he has in years. The reasons are left ambiguous, though Paul composes an email confessing to his wife what he did and that he didn't want his kids to know his dad as a murderer, even if he was loving and caring to them. He erases the email before sending it, but I still think that his thought process for doing what he did were left purposely ambiguous. What drives a man to do the things he did and that adds a compelling little twist to the character. The acting is great, Romain Duris does a great job at capturing this man's fragile emotional state, even though the appearance he gives off is as someone who is confident and calm. The guy's just great here honestly. The film might not have the showy or over-the-top dramatic moments, sort of like A Hijacking, but it is an intriguing, and ultimately, a very good movie about a man who destroys his own life over one little accident and how he finds redemption where, and when, he least expects it. See more Read all reviews
The Big Picture

My Rating

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Movie Info

Synopsis A successful lawyer with a perfect life murders his wife's lover and assumes his identity. He flees to an isolated part of Yugoslavia where he gets another shot at being himself and seeing the big picture.
Director
Éric Lartigau
Producer
Pierre-Ange Le Pogam
Screenwriter
Éric Lartigau, Laurent de Bartillat, Douglas Kennedy
Production Co
CiBy 2000, TF1 Films Production, EuropaCorp
Genre
Drama, Mystery & Thriller
Original Language
French (France)
Release Date (Streaming)
Aug 18, 2016
Box Office (Gross USA)
$158.4K
Runtime
1h 54m
Aspect Ratio
Scope (2.35:1)