Tyrannosaur (2011)
Average Rating: 7.3/10
Reviews Counted: 75
Fresh: 62 | Rotten: 13
Tyrannosaur is a brutal, frank, and ultimately rewarding story of violent men seeking far-off redemption.
Average Rating: 6.6/10
Critic Reviews: 21
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 6
Tyrannosaur is a brutal, frank, and ultimately rewarding story of violent men seeking far-off redemption.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 6,371
My Rating
Movie Info
Joseph (Peter Mullan) is an unemployed widower with a drinking problem, a man crippled by his own volatile temperament and furious anger. Hannah (Olivia Colman) is a Christian worker at a charity shop, a respectable woman who seems wholesome and happy. When circumstance brings the pair together, Hannah appears as Joseph's guardian angel, tempering his fury and offering him warmth, kindness and acceptance. As their relationship develops, Hannah's own secrets are revealed - her husband (Eddie
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Cast
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Peter Mullan
Joseph -
Olivia Colman
Hannah -
Eddie Marsan
James -
Ned Dennehy
Tommy -
Paul Popplewell
Bod -
Sally Carman
Marie -
Samuel Bottomley
Samuel -
Sian Breckin
Kelly, Kelly (Samuel's ... -
Jag Sanghera
Gurav -
Mike Fearnley
Dan -
Paul Conway
Terry -
Lee Rufford
Paul -
Robin Butler
Jack -
Craig Considine
Craig -
Robert Haythorne
Rob -
Archie Lal
Post Office Cashier -
Fiona Carnegie
Woman in Shop -
Julia Mallam
Drunk Woman -
Chris Wheat
Wake Singer
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Tyrannosaur Trailer & Photos
All Critics (77) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (63) | Rotten (13) | DVD (1)
The movie is cruelly frank about the ways damage cascades down to the powerless, but while it's not for the fainthearted (or for animal lovers), rewards are there.
Top CriticThe principals are superb, with Mullan and Colman doing a masterful job of inhabiting their separate but equal prisons.
You won't find two finer performances in recent times than those by Mullan and Colman, who in a perfect world would each have received Oscar nominations this week.
If the script ultimately seems a bit extreme (are there no immediate consequences for Joseph's tantrums or the criminal outbursts of Hannah's abusive husband?), it's often surprisingly successful in pushing the limits of British kitchen-sink drama.
Paddy Considine's first feature as writer-director comes off like a playwriting exercise, with familiar characters taking every opportunity to wage messy, cathartic arguments or exhume traumatic memories.
The acting - particularly the moving performance of Olivia Colman as a battered spouse living in a grim corner of Leeds, England - is fierce and committed. So why doesn't its impact linger?
A stunning and memorable debut.
Tyrannosaur is cinema that scars the soul - you'll only want to see it once, but once is enough.
Those angling for a "feel-bad" bummer won't be disappointed.
Considine equates the denizens of a Leeds housing estate with caged beasts and Mullan's performance is beautifully calibrated - a snarling, dangerous surface hiding the loyalty and affection which can be found underneath.
It sounds like an exercise in miserabilism, but Considine extracts black comedy, compassion, and dignity from his downtrodden characters and their blighted setting.
Considine makes painterly use of the canvases that are Mullan's and Colman's faces, deep pools of ache, in different stages of their descent to a breaking point.
A searing drama buoyed by exquisite performances and a keen understanding from its first-time director of the power of the absence of dialog.
[Mullan and Colman are] the anchors of the film's scary, tightly wound world, in which everyone's spring is dangerously close to being sprung.
A relentlessly-grim yarn revolving around a tragically-flawed trio being slowly swallowed whole by the emotional quicksand of a blue-collar wasteland where there really aren't any winners.
Audience Reviews for Tyrannosaur
Super Reviewer
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- Joseph: An animal can only take so much punishment and humiliation before it snaps.
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- Hannah: God loves you. You're God's child.
- Joseph: God ain't my fucking daddy, my daddy was a cunt. He knew he was a cunt. God still thinks he's God. No-one's told him otherwise.
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- Hannah: I feel safe with you.
- Joseph: Nobody's safe with me.
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- Joseph: What happened to you?
- Hannah: I fell over.
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Latest News on Tyrannosaur
February 14, 2012:
Paddy Considine Heralds The Years of the LocustThe "Tyrannosaur" director lines up his next project, an adaptation of the Jon Hotten book about...
November 17, 2011:
Critics Consensus: Breaking Dawn Part 1 Doesn't ShineThis week at the movies, we've got a vampire wedding (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1,...
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Foreign Titles
- Tyrannosaur - Eine Liebesgeschichte (DE)
- Rendición (ES)
