Waiting for the Barbarians

"J.M. Coetzee's brilliant 1980 novel of colonial breakdown is a tough prospect to film; he and Colombian auteur Ciro Guerra make an uneven but eventually stirring stab at it."

"It feels vital, bolstered and humanised by a stunning portrait of quiet humanity by Mark Rylance."

"Ciro Guerra never quite finds an imagistic equivalent to the novel's apocalyptic mood and subtly hallucinogenic atmosphere."

"Its principal performances are superb, and yet most of the movie is dead on screen."

"Depp... seems under the impression that he's still working with Tim Burton."

"Sparks fly... but not enough for award-winning Colombian director Ciro Guerra to save this anti-imperialist allegory from the thuddingly obvious."

"Intermittently engrossing and always interesting, but less potent than it could have been."

"It's a collision of talents, technique and even philosophy: The much-honoured Mr. Rylance can be an antidote to actorly artifice; Mr. Depp is a delivery system for eccentricity."

"Despite the sincerity that's in every scene with Rylance's performance, the movie's good intentions remain wistful, and thoroughly frustrating."

"This is proficient, measured filmmaking from a director who has already peered more deeply, and persuasively, into colonialism's heart of darkness."

"The heavy-handed allegory... relies too much on abuse and would-be Big Ideas."

"An emotionally brutal and slow-paced film that has a few good performances and not a lot to say."

"The screenplay is written by J.M. Coetzee, adapting his own 1980 novel with a strikingly free hand but the message left intact - the eternal awful irony of which Them should really fear which Us."

"The book, with its themes of paranoia and totalitarianism, was acclaimed as a masterpiece. But the film... doesn't quite work."

"The film... wants to tear down the Empire-loving writer's romanticised notions of non-Western cultures, but does not quite know how."

"There's not much here for even the most ardent fan of overdetermined political fables."

"…thoughtful, soulful filmmaking…"

"It’s all perfectly well-done, and it all recedes into memory the instant you leave the theater."

"Like its noncommittal production design, which combines various North African, Middle Eastern and Asian influences for the locals and locales, the critique itself remains finally quite dull and dispersed because it's so broad and unspecific."

"It’s easy to read the film as a not particularly subtle metaphor for fascism or “the war on terror”, and its black hats aren’t so much characters as automatons."