Critic Reviews

• Tom Huddlestone, Time Out

  There's a low-key New York drama lurking somewhere, but Barron can't seem to decide if he's making that or something more flashy.

• Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

  Overburdened with disorienting stylistic devices and contrived plot elements that reduce the psychological depth to which it aspires.

• Tasha Robinson, Chicago Tribune

  In this case, what looks like an ambitious film-school project, complete with heavy-handed sincerity, experimental camera style, and an overplayed central metaphor, becomes gently lyrical and melancholy.

• V.A. Musetto, New York Post

  Barron's direction is low-key but efficient.

• Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News

  The movie suffocates under the weight of too many wrong choices.

• Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times

  Choking Man mainly falters in its inability to reconcile the darker psychological elements of Jorge's mind and all that they portend.

• Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

  Low-key indie.

• Anton Bitel, Little White Lies

  For all its concern with social and mental disintegration, Choking Man is a strangely tender film.

• , Empire Magazine

  Despite efforts to impart a little tension and human interest, the tale is told with such discretion, it's almost anonymous.

• Trevor Johnston, Film4

  There's enough charm and enterprise here to win over viewers who have the patience to stick by the tongue-tied Jorge. An intriguing change of direction for pop-video pioneer Barron, though next time he might like to cut loose that bit more.

• James Christopher, Times [UK]

  The creepy and original power of the film is the schizophrenic other who taunts him when he finally crawls home to his maggoty bedsit. Weird.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  Some US indie films are so torpid, so pointless and so incredibly whingey that you want to reach into the screen and slap the face of everyone involved. This film, by writer-director Steve Barron, is one such.

• Sukhdev Sandhu, Daily Telegraph

  The film marries digicam naturalism to animated fantasy to oddsome but fascinating effect, rendering magical the inner world of the shy and almost muted Jorge. It's an unusual but valuable addition to the cinema of contemporary migration.

• Tim Evans, Sky Movies

  It's all a bit anonymous despite engaging performances, especially from Yuan as the sunny optimist, but the character of Jorge is so cripplingly introverted that there's nothing to latch on to.

• , Total Film

  Steve Barron's darkly melancholic, low-budget drama is worlds away from the blockbuster swagger of his earlier Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

• Christopher Tookey, Daily Mail [UK]

  They don't add up to much; and he's just too passive to make us care even slightly about whether he gets the girl or ends up taking a meat-cleaver to his rival.

• , Sun Online

  After more than an hour in Jorge's relentlessly miserable company the voice in The Sneak's head was saying "leave now".

• Nigel Andrews, Financial Times

  Modest, quirky, well acted by an unknown cast.

• Anthony Quinn, Independent

  It's meant to be a portrait of a man "choked" by his own alienation, but Jorge's shyness comes over as dullness, and after all the sensitive maundering the conclusion is a terrible letdown.

• Derek Malcolm, This is London

  It's not a bad effort at all - and certainly a whole class above Ninja Turtles.

Read all 23 critic reviews