Lightweight script doesn’t help a grandiose premise.
Unfortunately this "Story" never finds its footing as either a creepy morality play or a performance-driven two-hander.
Like Serial and The Jinx, it draws some fascination from the distinct possibility that the suspect it studies may be guilty as charged.
Toronto Sun April 16, 2015 This is chilling material, and Hill and Franco make sure the story packs a wallop.
Longo’s character remains not just opaque, but uninteresting, while Finkel’s gets endless, useless attention. As fascinating as he may...
True Story is more like watching a chess match between expert players than attending a soccer match that erupts in a crowd riot.
The Guardian January 24, 2015 The important themes below the surface come out in impressionistic waves. The actual story, with its occasionally cringe-worthy, on-the-nose dialog...
"True Story" rings false from start to finish.
Detroit News April 17, 2015 Jones delivers her moral righteousness with a passion the rest of the film lacks. Otherwise, this is just the story of an awful human and the...
The Atlantic October 14, 2015 Franco and Hill’s early scenes together maintains intrigue for a while, but True Story never quite indicates that it has something compe...
Being strictly true isn’t even the point: being convincingly or interestingly so, or preferably both, might have elevated this thing above dr...
New York Post April 15, 2015 In the four years since he was Oscar-nominated for "127 Hours'' - and disastrously co-hosted the Academy Awards ceremony – James Franco h...
True Story is an intrinsically fascinating and occasionally riveting tale marred by unnecessary embellishments.
Boston Globe April 16, 2015 Leads with its chin from the title on down and which turns a startling tale of true crime and false identities into a heavy-breathing drama th...
Although True Story never comes close to Truman’s Capote’s In Cold Blood standard for true crime, its willingness to shed the procedura...
If we figure out Franco-as-Longo is lying before Hill-as-Finkel does, then why should we be interested in this writer’s redemption if he&rsqu...
Director Rupert Goold keeps things appropriately creepy, but True Story is no Capote.
When more ambitious films indict a lie, the entertainment defense wins every case, but True Story falls short.
New Yorker April 20, 2015 Filming a drama about the compromises and conventions of storytelling, Goold falls prey to them. He lacks the pulp verve and the symbolic imag...
Irish Times July 19, 2015 Think of it as a feature-length version of Law & Order and you will pass the time tolerably well.
Slant Magazine April 14, 2015 If the film’s copycat visual artistry illuminates nothing, at least its script is sincerely devoted to probing Finkel and Longo’s odd p...
RogerEbert.com April 16, 2015 "True Story" spends much of its 90 minutes trying to figure out just what it is.
We should suffer along with the unsteady Finkel as he gets drawn into Longo’s world, but too often, his anxieties remain exclusively his own.
Attention, true crime addicts desperate for a new fix after Serial and The Jinx: This riveting and highly disturbing chiller will satiate your...
Chicago Reader April 16, 2015 The script is first-rate, questioning whether any story can really be credible when both the writer and the subject have everything to gain from it.
New York Times April 16, 2015 The real story of Christian Longo and Michael Finkel might be a fascinating and disturbing tale of crime, curiosity and journalistic ethics, b...
Chicago Tribune April 16, 2015 Even with shrewd and honest work by Franco and Hill and a solid supporting turn from under-used Felicity Jones as Finkel’s romantic part...
True Story trips and stumbles so much in the telling that you don’t know what to believe, and instead of one man’s irony you end up wit...
This based-on-fact drama would seem to have enough lurid details, slippery truths and human complexity to be an intriguing combination of "Capote...
Rolling Stone April 16, 2015 Maybe the point is we never know who or what to believe. But too many maybes are hell on sustaining tension.
ScreenCrush April 13, 2015 A very dry legal procedural.
True Story is involving but surprisingly calm, going for stretches without seeming to care whether what he’s reporting is an expos or a...
Uneven but Franco’s creepy charm is compelling.
In Goold’s hands, the two thesps deliver measured, soul-searching work.
Never mind the facts. True Story, slick and shaky, doesn’t know where the truth lies.
Globe and Mail April 17, 2015 You could easily imagine Hill and Franco in a parody version, with Franco, like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, crossing and uncrossing his le...
The Guardian July 19, 2015 The result is disappointingly televisual, the verdict wholly predictable.
That the main characters are played by James Franco and Jonah Hill makes it more interesting - a good thing because most of the story is two g...
The Dissolve April 15, 2015 Goold has made a stolid, well-acted, intelligent drama that respects the complications of Finkel and Longo’s storytelling agendas withou...
Independent July 16, 2015 It is never clear whether the film is a study in journalistic bad faith, a courtroom procedural or a drama of very different characters who pr...
An anaemic true crime story which its high-rolling leads are unable to save with their star wattage.
Every so often you will look at Franco and think what a fine job of acting he’s doing. But you’ll think that even as you are not believ...
Franco downplays his accused killer role, speaking softly and dazedly, which works eerily well. Hill makes Finkel driven and obsessed, yet never he...
The Guardian July 16, 2015 Uninspired and self-conscious performances from Jonah Hill and James Franco are part of what’s wrong with this exasperating and unenlightenin...
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