Synopsis
An eccentric mountain man on the run from the local sheriff recalls the mysterious events that brought him to his present fugitive state.
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Cast
- Rami MalekBuster
- DJ QuallsBrown (The Last Free Man)
- Kate Lyn SheilMarty
- Toby HussDeputy Winston
- Lin ShayePauline
- Mark KellyOscar
- Bruce BundyRanger Meg
- Teresa YenqueAdelita
- Sandra Ellis LaffertyMrs. Bowery
- Nicholas PryorMr. Bowery
Recommendations
- 90
Village Voice
It’s science fiction that’s complex, thoughtful and funny, like 12 Monkeys or Primer run through a Fargo filter. - 75
RogerEbert.com
It’s a movie that puts the viewer into a bad dream, and is very canny in dispensing the keys to unlock the meanings of that dream — and in strategically withholding some of those keys. - 70
The Hollywood Reporter
An affecting brainteaser with echoes of Lynchian dissociation. - 70
Variety
An unusual movie like Buster’s Mal Heart demands an unusual star, and Rami Malek proves an ideal fit for Sarah Adina Smith’s sophomore feature. - 67
The A.V. Club
Buster’s Mal Heart is indie sci-fi at its most abstract, taking elements of more populist, influential films like "Fight Club" and "The Matrix" and filtering them through philosophical exchanges and coolly stylized compositions to produce something that’s somehow simultaneously more weighty and more slight. - 60
We Got This Covered
Despite its undoubted ambition and an excellent central performance from Rami Malek, Buster’s Mal Heart slips into the traps that so often face thrillers of its type. - 60
The New York Times
Buster’s Mal Heart is about the making of a madman. It also aspires, with less success, to philosophically query the void at the center of modern life and Christianity’s failure to fill it. - 50
The Film Stage
Despite a committed lead performance and flashes of finding beauty in the bizarre, Buster’s Mal Heart loses confidence as it proceeds, resulting in a journey of half-formed ideas that could’ve used as much focus as Malek’s dead-eyed glance.
