Critic Reviews

• Wally Hammond, Time Out

  Ambitious cross-cutting and occasional bursts of strident music hint at psychologically complex parallels and readings that the film fails to deliver.

• Ty Burr, Boston Globe

  It's good, nasty fun until it gets boxed in by its own contrivances toward the end.

• Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle

  You can see this Danish offering as a sardonic update of familiar noir material, or simply as the story of the midlife crisis of a guy who wishes -- or dreams, or dreads -- that he's living out a grand drama. There are pleasures to be had either way.

• J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader

  [Bornedal] steers his mistaken-identity story in a more generic direction.

• Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

  I suspect anyone who went for last year's foreign-language pulp fiction of choice, Tell No One, will be rewarded by Ole Bornedal's latest.

• Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

  It's interesting that two of the best thrillers of the last several months, Tell No One and Just Another Love Story, have come from Europe.

• Edward Porter, Sunday Times (UK)

  It's done with some style, Bornedal telling much of the story in nifty montages set to insistent music, but I couldn't get into the spirit of it.

• Philip French, Observer [UK]

  This engrossing Danish thriller is like the 1995 Sandra Bullock vehicle While You Were Sleeping merged with Festen and turned into a film noir.

• Allan Hunter, Daily Express

  You are swept along by the confidence of the storytelling even as you accept it might not hold up to close scrutiny.

• Patrick Peters, Empire Magazine

  High concept thriller which fails to captivate due to unsympathetic characters.

• Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph

  The film's best hope is black comedy - it's certainly impossible to take seriously - and yet crazy amounts of it are socked over as bombastic, overedited melodrama.

• Ali Catterall, Film4

  A fast, furious and fun homage to film noir with heart to spare.

• David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]

  Cracking along at a fast pace with a plot full of twists and turns, it's a first-rate thriller and one bound to get the Hollywood remake treatment very soon.

• Derek Malcolm, This is London

  It's melodrama, and sometimes absurdist. But there's a sense of humour too and while it trips over itself in the effort to be original, it is an impressive piece of film-making all the same.

• Kevin Maher, Times [UK]

  Bornedal's movie is slick and arresting, and proves again to Hollywood that mature genre film-making is thriving on this side of the Atlantic.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  A game but chaotic attempt at neo-noir, ferociously acted and directed.

• Jonas Milk, Little White Lies

  A well paced, though hardly credible, piece of noir.

• Rob Daniel, Sky Movies

  Nimbly weaving between mid-life crisis melodrama, noir, comedy, horror, this is Lars von Trier meets Michael Haneke and, in a good way, one of the year's most uncomfortable watches.

• Neil Smith, Total Film

  The grim result might stretch credibility, but that doesn't make it any less entertaining.

• Christopher Tookey, Daily Mail [UK]

  It's a Hitchcock-style thriller involving mistaken identity, mid-life crisis and adulterous romance. It gets very far-fetched towards the end, but it's enjoyably suspenseful and extremely well acted.

Read all 25 critic reviews