Reviews
The Independent on Sunday
Jonathan Romney
“Bong's new feature Mother is almost a perfect film, in the sense that no image, no moment is wasted: everything plays its part in the narrative web that he spins with co-writer Park Eun-kyo.”
22/08/2010
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Time Out
Tom Huddleston
“Mother’ is a murder mystery, a melodrama, a black comedy, a heartbreaking tragedy, a keen social satire and much more... Bold, unpredictable and quietly devastating, ‘Mother’ is Bong’s first masterpiece.”
19/08/2010
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Total Film
Simon Kinnear
“If the detective plot is overly contrived… well, so were many of Hitchcock’s. Still, there’s ample conviction in Hye-ja’s pitch-perfect anti-heroine, a model of frazzled motherhood worthy of Joan Crawford.”
04/08/2010
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The Observer
Philip French
“His accomplished new film, a psychological thriller, resembles its predecessors both in being overlong and in mocking pompous, ineffectual coppers, but has some excellent and highly satisfying twists.”
22/08/2010
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The Daily Telegraph
Tim Robey
“The off-kilter story logic, pitch-perfect editing and beady compositional panache make it stylistically pleasurable.”
19/08/2010
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Empire Magazine
Kim Newman
“ike Bong’s previous films, it has an aspect of straight-faced, absurd humour, but plays a chillingly serious game as the terrifying heroine learns more than she wants to about her son and the strata of tossed-aside, broken-minded people all around.”
03/11/2010
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
“Some scenes have a Hitchcockian suspense flair, others dark streaks of sardonic wit.”
18/08/2010
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The Times
Wendy Ide
“The film’s structure and pacing is elegant, and the cinematography is striking and frequently rather beautiful — but for all the art house trappings, Bong Joon-ho is doing what he does best here: quality genre cinema.”
20/08/2010
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The Sunday Times
Peter Whittle
“The director, Bong Joon-Ho, certainly knows how to frame a nice shot, but despite its obvious intentions, the film slips very easily from the mind.”
22/08/2010
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