Critic Reviews

• Dave Calhoun, Time Out

  By all accounts, Taylor's play was a more experimental piece than this film, in which the production values, like the acting, veer between the acceptable and the stodgy.

• David Edelstein, New York Magazine

  The subject -- self-deception and failure of nerve in an unjust world -- is too messy and horrible to laugh away.

• Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

  Good contributes very little to a conundrum that has occupied historians and psychologists for half a century.

• Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

  Good has a stagy fustiness, but it's worth seeing for Mortensen, who makes this study of 
 a 'good German' look creepily contemporary. He shows us the horror 
 of ignorance.

• Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine

  Morally speaking, everything about Good is tidily correct. But it is more a predictable parable than a full-fledged narrative.

• Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger

  There are some striking locations and certainly the era continues to fascinate audiences (and, particularly this year, filmmakers). Too bad, then, that this is such a disappointment -- awkwardly directed and flatly scripted.

• Leo Goldsmith, indieWIRE

  Bears a superficial resemblance to "The Conformist" and "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis," with their sense of dreary complacency, oppressively museum-like spaces, and curiously drab natural settings, but ultimately "Good" is less evocative

• Allan Hunter, Daily Express

  A tale illustrating the banality of evil is as timely as ever but the execution is heavy-handed and even with location filming and elaborate sets it still feels very theatrical.

• Chris Prince, Sky Movies

  Ultimately Good, like its central figure, seems to lack the courage of its convictions.

• Angie Errigo, Empire Magazine

  A strong cast and good starting material doesn't manage to save this unsuccessful adaptation.

• Richard Luck, Film4

  Not for the first time, great theatre makes for a merely adequate film.

• Wendy Ide, Times [UK]

  It's a thought-provoking theme, which is rather let down by a thoroughly unconvincingly turn from Mortensen.

• Andrew Pulver, Guardian [UK]

  To its credit, Good is at least a piece with something serious to say, with little of the meretricious responsibility-deflecting that The Reader dealt in.

• Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph

  We're gearing up for a clunker of a climax involving musically gifted interns at the world's sprucest concentration camp. Mortensen wears it well, but this feels like very old hat.

• Ali Upham, Total Film

  Good's attempts to diagnose the cancerous spread of Nazi influence through Germany's population in the mid-'30s is laudable, but despite Mortensen's stoic talents Halder is just too hollow a character for this to be anything other than a vapid parable.

• David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]

  The point is how does a "good" man get seduced by evil? Thing is, the movie's so muted and keeps viewers at such arm's length, you cease to wonder.

• , Sun Online

  It is a fine piece of acting from Mortensen, who portrays his character's weakness superbly. But Good sometimes lacks pace and direction. On balance this is an intelligent and sensitive approach to a very dark era of history.

• Nigel Andrews, Financial Times

  It may have been a good stage play: people say it was. But its author, the late C.P. Taylor, was not around to stop it becoming a lousy film.

• Anthony Quinn, Independent

  Mortensen isn't bad, though he looks merely absent-minded rather than anguished.

• , This is London

  The original play, once dubbed one of the 100 best of the century, is fleshed out with skill by Amorim but somehow his film never comes fully to life. Even its melodramatic ending falls flat.

Read all 25 critic reviews