Synopsis
Two brothers and their wives meet up at a haute-cuisine restaurant to discuss what to do about a horrific crime that their sons committed together. As the quartet debate their options, the conversation reopens old wounds between the siblings.
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Cast
- Richard GereStan Lohman
- Laura LinneyClaire Lohman
- Steve CooganPaul Lohman
- Rebecca HallKatelyn Lohman
- Chloë SevignyBarbara Lohman
- Michael ChernusDylan Heinz
- Seamus Davey-FitzpatrickRick Lohman
- Charlie PlummerMichael Lohman
- Adepero OduyeNina
- Dominic ColónRafael
Recommendations
- 90
Variety
Moverman balances the potential for staginess with his flowing cinematic bravura; he keeps surprising you, and he gives the drama a dash of poison elegance. - 83
The Playlist
This is a film that glories in juxtaposition, as exchanges of bestial ferocity hiss back and forth in an excruciatingly elegant destination restaurant, and as poisonously feral barbs are traded across a table laden with elaborately effete hors d’oeuvres. - 68
TheWrap
At once a darkly comic social satire, a pitch-black moral thriller and an earnest plea to recognize mental illness, The Dinner is a seven-layer dip overflowing with compelling individual ingredients that, when mixed together, make the finished dish awfully difficult to digest. - 67
IndieWire
Moverman’s discordant structure constantly veers from clumsy moments to fascinating exchanges. As an experiment, it never finds a complete shape, and ends on a frustratingly abrupt note. - 60
The Hollywood Reporter
A high-carat cast...tears into the juicy material with relish for the most part, but by trying to keep the prolonged sit-down affair from becoming excessively stagey, Moverman adds too many distracting flashbacks to maintain the original’s hard-hitting and well-aimed gut punch. - 60
The Telegraph
These characters get ghastly fast. It’s the pace and panic of modernity Moverman grasps best as morally corrosive forces: the soft ping of iPhone email alerts never letting us be, and consciences wiped clean as quickly as the next news cycle whips around. - 60
We Got This Covered
An imperfect but fascinating film, The Dinner's stellar cast delivers a deeply troubling and psychologically complex treatment of class and family. - 50
Screen Daily
In Moverman’s hands, it becomes a contemporary American fable about savagery lurking behind civilised facades, about class and racial divisions in a country that calls itself united, and about ethical vacuums in a connected, online society. It’s also an unbalanced, uneven ride, a distracting hot and cold shower of intense scenes featuring four terrific actors and long, meandering passages of flashback filler.
