Critic Reviews

• Jon Frosch, The Atlantic

  The dialogue is punchy, but the film lacks visual personality, and the insights into Sarkozy and France as a whole don't cut very deep.

• Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

  Too often ... the jaunty, overeager background music seems to be underscoring jokes the action doesn't provide.

• John Hartl, Seattle Times

  Sarkozy seems to mean exactly what he says, even when he's lying for his cause, and Podalydès has the skill to demonstrate that.

• Amy Biancolli, San Francisco Chronicle

  The film is a vehement drama and a fitfully amusing snark fest set to Nicola Piovani's jaunty circus music. It winds up only half-succeeding at both.

• Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

  "The Conquest," a feature about recent French politics, makes me yearn for a similar American treatment of our own scene.

• Ty Burr, Boston Globe

  "Conquest'' is a seriocomic portrait of naked ambition and a depiction of petty office politics on a national scale. It's a deadpan hoot that lacks the bite it could and arguably should have had.

• Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  "The Conquest" is like a French restaurant that serves small portions of tart appetizers and calls them freedom fries, yet begrudgingly we must salute the gall.

• Sarah Boslaugh, Playback:stl

  The Conquest does not aspire to Shakespearean heights (press notes to the contrary) but remains more on the level of a well-made movie of the week...

• Kelly Vance, East Bay Express

  Maybe a documentary would have done the job better.

• Gerald Peary, Boston Phoenix

  The performances are convincing, but American audiences may find little to care about in the Gallic-specific backstage machinations of Sarkozy's ascendancy.

• Ron Wilkinson, Monsters and Critics

  Denis Podalydès seems to be more like Nicolas Sarkozy than the president himself is this political tragi-comedy.

• Doris Toumarkine, Film Journal International

  This delicious satire daring to depict current French President Nicolas Sarkozy's recent rise to power is a real upscale art-house pleaser.

• Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice

  A glimpse of the glory and the loss in the rise to power of Nicholas Sarkozy, the president of France.

• Noel Murray, AV Club

  The Conquest offers that familiar thrill of being allowed to peek behind the curtain and see what our leaders are really like...

Read all 14 critic reviews