Reviews
Empire Magazine
Kim Newman
“The film seems to wrap up its story in mid-point, but there are stunning reversals, one of the scariest (but most understated) lift scenes ever shot, a telling ambiguity, more tragedies and two astonishing endings left...”
03/11/2010
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Variety
Jonathan Holland
“A deeply rewarding throwback to the unself-conscious days when cinema still strove to be magical, "The Secrets in their Eyes" is simply mesmerizing. While it packs two generation-spanning love stories, a noirish thriller, some delicious comedy, a pointed political critique and much food for thought into more than two hours' compelling, grown-up entertainment, the film is still more than the sum of its parts. ”
04/10/2009
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The Times
Wendy Ide
“What makes the film particularly successful — and what will sink the inevitable English-language remake — is the backdrop for the majority of the action. Argentina in 1974 is corrupt and violent, and governed by smirking autocrats who bend the law to suit their own savage ends and will beat a confession from innocent men in order to tidy up their paperwork.”
13/08/2010
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The Sunday Times
Cosmo Landesman
“an impressive, engrossing cop-lawyer thriller that mixes lush romanticism with hard-boiled realism.”
15/08/2010
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Total Film
Tom Dawson
“This Argentian effort bagged 2010’s Foreign Language Film Oscar instead of The White Ribbon and A Prophet. While not as radical as either, it’s still a superior procedural.”
04/08/2010
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The Evening Standard
Derek Malcolm
“It is well-made, intelligently using humour to alleviate its drama, and contains two outstanding performances.”
13/08/2010
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
“The film rattles along like a well-crafted Hollywood noir, circa 1945. The very faces are temps perdu Tinseltown: the two leads could be Gene Tierney and George Brent gone Latin. Even the dialogue is snap-brimmed”
11/08/2010
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
“The Secret in Her Eyes isn't, in fact, as good as either The White Ribbon or A Prophet, but it is a supremely watchable, well-made and well-acted movie with a dark, sinewy sense of history: a tremendously slick thriller”
12/08/2010
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The Independent
Geoffrey MacNab
“The film takes the elements of the conventional murder mystery and then spins round them a story that is both lyrical and heavy on pathos. And Darín's Espositio is one of those crumpled idealists that you just can't help rooting for.”
13/08/2010
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The Los Angeles Times
Betsy Sharkey
“There's something about a haunting mystery being solved by a haunted mind that's particularly seductive. That's just one of the many pleasures of "The Secret in Their Eyes," whose string of knots challenges and charms in a way that make its win of the foreign-language Oscar this year perfectly understandable.”
16/04/2010
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The Daily Mail
Chris Tookey
“Writer-director Juan Jose Campanella is a master of camerawork and editing. He is also wonderful with actors. There isn't a false performance here.”
12/08/2010
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The New Yorker
David Denby
““The Secret in Their Eyes,” which won the Oscar this year for best foreign-language film, is, I suppose, a legal thriller, but it’s powerfully and richly imagined: a genre-busting movie that successfully combines the utmost in romanticism with the utmost in realism....”
19/04/2010
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The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
“The past continually forces its way into the present in “The Secret in Their Eyes,” an attractive, messy drama riddled with violence and edged with comedy that comes with a hint of Grand Guignol, a suggestion of politics and three resonant, deeply appealing performances.”
16/04/2010
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The Observer
Philip French
“There are occasional moments of implausibility in Campanella's film, but they're more than outweighed by the emotional force of the narrative and its incidental felicities.”
15/08/2010
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The Independent on Sunday
Nicholas Barber
“Little by little, The Secret in Their Eyes develops into an aching elegy for the people Darin has lost and the opportunities he's missed. But if the film is strong on the "drama" part of "crime drama", the "crime" part is lacking: the murder case is ultimately too simple to hold our interest for two steadily paced hours.”
15/08/2010
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The Daily Telegraph
Tim Robey
“Handsome, fitfully absorbing, fundamentally trite. ”
12/08/2010
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Time Out
Dave Calhoun
“Essentially a grand, time-hopping police procedural of ‘Inspector Morse’ levels of ingenuity, souped up with some naff music, heavily filtered camerawork and a theme of romantic longing spanning 25 years, it’s a film of enormous pretension and not enough reward.”
12/08/2010
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