Best movie of this year hands down!

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Roman Polanski does something that is not easy here: he transfers a play to the screen, and never lets you forget that it is a play you're watching, but he makes it completely cinematic at the same time. The play itself is a great enigma about truth, doubt, vigilantism and justice. I don't want to give away the ending, but it is masterfully designed and executed. It's an intense and compelling film, the kind that invites long debates after it's over. The three leads are perfectly cast: Weaver and Kingsley are at the peak of their powers, but Wilson is much more than just "a third wheel". *** out of 4.

This movie probes into a topic that is rather controversial. The process of justice punishes criminals that commit crimes to sentences that remove their freedom and have tremendous impact morally because of the stigma created by the trial and jail time. But... how do we punish crimes against humanity that were sanctioned by a government? Sigourney Weaver is outstanding in her portrayal as a tortured victim now having the opportunity to exact revenge on her tormentor but is it the right person? Her husband has doubts. She has no doubts. Was it him or wasn't it? What is the right thing to do? You will see a war of morals and the husband who wants to support his wife but questions her intentions and actions.It relies heavily on good performances and Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley are more than up to the task. Weaver is particularly effective as the film plays on viewer's emotions and for a good period of time, one doesn't know at all who's to blame and who deserves pity. Ben Kingsley's acting as the wicked DR is absolutely superb (I mean do you expect any less of him) and, although he never managed to convince me of his possible innocence, his acting made everything seem so much like real life.... Weaver's portrayal of Pauline, the revenging rape victim is electric from point one. Her resolve to make the evil dr. Miranda (Kingsley) confess to the torture and rape, while having to listen to her lawyer husband, Stuart Wislon, implore her to be reasonable, is incredible and probably one of her strongest performances! What a classic! Overall rating: 9 out of 10.

Death and the Maiden is one of those darkly comfortable films where the opening moments are so intriguing and spot-on perfect that almost any continuation would be a disappointment. But, alas, movies have to be about something, and so slowly the purity of the situation settles as carefully as it can into the decisively paced story.Sigourney Weaver plays an intuitive and imperious specimen, a troubled housewife, playing her as a woman performing rather than personifying her traditionally feminine position. She is married to a renowned lawyer in an unclarified South American country. One night, a storm forces her husband, played by Stuart Wilson, to ride home with a kind stranger, played by Ben Kingsley. That is the exposition for this absorbing film, directed by Roman Polanski, a natural player in the realm of this story, based on a play by Chilean exile Ariel Dorfman, and clearly so. In the movie's lingering dark of the heart, Kingsley, crudely tied to a chair, will claim his innocence. Weaver will taunt him and interrogate him. And Wilson, her husband, will shudder first in one direction and then in the other, because this doctor is a pleasant and harmlessly polite man and a very intelligent one, and if there is a way for him to talk his way to freedom, he will realize it.This atmospheric drama is, somewhat, on the subject of real shame: Is this the man who raped and tortured her? To some extent, it concerns the character of guilt and its function in one's identity: If this is the same guy, maybe he has changed. Was he a product of the times or a victim of them? If he is guilty, does he atone? Is his crime forgivable to the human standard? Is the woman's husband somehow hindered by a male bonding with this man allegedly hostile to women? All of these reservations lie in wait provocatively beneath the brooding facade of this masterpiece, enriching and intensifying its insatiably vindictive story, which oddly enough is not so much about whether or not this is the man who tortured her, but about the unpredictability of Weaver's behavior, if she really knows what she's doing, if she has an idea of what she will do if she is right and he is in fact her scarring tormentor.The whole story leads up to a moving, unforgettable three-minute monologue by the doctor, giftedly delivered by Kingsley, so that we have to resolve not only the issue of his guilt or innocence in this makeshift trial, but the issue of its value. It is at this stirring climax that one can truly say that this minor string quartet-based masterpiece of claustrophobia is all as regards acting. Kingsley here can compare to the best of the rest of his work with his shrewd performance: He makes his character so smart that whether he's guilty or not, we have a definite appreciation for his struggle, and thus he not only fleshes out the character in Dorfman's drama but also heightens the drama without compromising anything about the script. Another actor, even one just as gifted, may easily have lacked the creative initiative to compel the character as such, a pivotal one at the core of the story.Moreover, without the Sigourney Weaver performance, the film could easily have been a lot less impactful. There must have been the pull to emphasize the years-pent rage of her character, but she not only brings so many other colors to this apparent maven, but understands that in a character who is seeking revenge, less is more, because less can be a whole lot more fulfilling in its jeering and mischief. Characterization is a side-effect that emanates from action and dialogue, and there are times, during the dialogue, when the film certainly clues us into its stage origins, when we feel we have almost been carried back to the tangible events she recalls. And Polanski uses the camera in these time-transcendent moments as a spectator, standing facing her and listening, just as one may want to even when seeing this performed on stage.The conflicted lawyer is credibly by Wilson as a man who would sincerely love to discern the truth, he is a deputy for the audience, the character whose feelings we share when he listens to Weaver's horror stories through Polanski's camera's eyes. But she and Kingsley both know that no jury can satisfy, or grasp, the personality of the circumstances. No more than the torturer and the tortured have shared that information, and perhaps only by changing places can they understand it, and that is what justifies her actions to anyone in the audience, even those who starkly oppose the concept of revenge.

Roman Polanski's film is raw and exciting as you are literally on the edge of you seat wondering just what is going to happen next.It is based upon a play, so there are only three characters, but that is all it needs.Sigourney Weaver is a torture survivor from a Latin-American country. Pick one, we have been complicit in torture in many of them. She is married to Stuart Wilson, who has just been picked to head up a new commission to bring torturers to justice, but only those who have killed. There will be nothing for survivors like Weaver.Enter the great Ben Kingsley, who just happens to pick up her husband after a flat tire. She recognizes the voice - or she says she does. The rest of the story is how she is convinced he is her torturer and captures him to force a confession.This is where it gets raw and powerful as she recounts what was done to her while trying to get a confession. Her husband is caught in that trap where you support your wife, but you don't quite believe her to be right.It was compelling, and all three actors made it a film that should have gotten wider recognition.