Carnage

4.00
    Carnage
    2011

    Synopsis

    After 11-year-old Zachary Cowan strikes his classmate across the face with a stick after an argument, the victim's parents invite Zachary's parents to their Brooklyn apartment to deal with the incident in a civilized manner.

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    Cast

    • Jodie FosterPenelope Longstreet
    • Kate WinsletNancy Cowan
    • Christoph WaltzAlan Cowan
    • John C. ReillyMichael Longstreet
    • Elvis PolanskiZachary Cowan
    • Eliot BergerEthan Longstreet
    • Joseph RezwinWalter (voice)
    • Nathan RippyDennis (voice)
    • Tanya LopertMichael's Mother (voice)
    • Julie AdamsSecretary (voice)

    Recommendations

    • 80

      The Hollywood Reporter

      Snappy, nasty, deftly acted and perhaps the fastest paced film ever directed by a 78-year-old, this adaptation of Yasmina Reza's award-winning play God of Carnage fully delivers the laughs and savagery of the stage piece.
    • 80

      Boxoffice Magazine

      Relatively light-hearted for a Polanski film (no one dies), Carnage is fun verbal warfare cleanly filmed.
    • 75

      Slant Magazine

      One doesn't have to look too closely at Carnage's final shot to marvel at the way Polanski refuses to haughtily indict his audience in the pettiness of his characters' behavior.
    • 75

      New York Post

      Fast, furious and often funny. But no blood is truly shed (except literally in a playground fight during the opening credits).
    • 67

      IndieWire

      Polanski struggles to make the material more cinematic, toying with clever mise-en-scene to showcase the mounting tensions. However, Carnage repeatedly suffers from an internal tension between the possibilities of two media at odds with each other.
    • 63

      ReelViews

      Carnage suffers from a common problem that afflicts many stage-to-screen adaptations: too much artifice and contrivance.
    • 60

      Time Out

      Watch the director's 1976 "The Tenant," and you'll know he can do more with less.
    • 50

      Variety

      The real battle in Roman Polanski's brisk, fitfully amusing adaptation of Yasmina Reza's popular play is a more formal clash between stage minimalism and screen naturalism, as this acid-drenched four-hander never shakes off a mannered, hermetic feel that consistently betrays its theatrical origins.

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