A provocative, thoughtful perspective on an arch-criminal guilty of heinous crime.

Full Review | Aug 18, 2022

It is a stunning performance of light and shade, tracing his descent from total denial to despair, disillusionment and defeat.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 26, 2021

Most impressive of all is how, with the world closing in on the ranting, paranoid monster, Ganz ratchets down his performance from towering to cowering in minute increments.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 3, 2020

It asks a great deal of indulgence from its audience, almost as though nothing less than an endurance test would do in dealing with this heavyweight subject. And that, despite admirable aims, doesn't make for great cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 24, 2019

Provocative look at Hitler's last days is extremely violent.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 20, 2014

...an unflinching, hard, relentlessly honest movie that refuses to ask questions that have easy answers. It is also brilliantly acted, written and focused...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 29, 2013

Does Downfall "humanize" Hitler and his henchmen, as its critics have complained? Yes, and it should: to pretend these villains were less than human is to let ourselves off the hook, to take the easy and dangerous exit of demonology.

Full Review | Jan 22, 2013

"Downfall" isn't about commuting history's sentence for the Nazis, but heeding its warning - a gruesome, sustained-tension lesson about informed politics and whether those who left evil to its own devices could arrive at a place of complicit guilt.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 25, 2010

It's reach exceeds its grasp; nonetheless, a compelling study of Hitler's last days.

Full Review | Original Score: 71/100 | Jul 21, 2009

As the first German-made film about Hitler's ruination since G.W. Pabst's "Der Letzte Akt" ("The Last Act" - 1956) "Downfall" is a stunning cinematic achievement that illuminates minutiae about the last 10 days of the nefarious German leader who won the h

Full Review | Original Score: A | Apr 18, 2009

What an act of bravery it was to make Downfall.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 28, 2008

Features a staggeringly creepy performance by Bruno Ganz, whose Hitler is both a raving psychotic and a beaten, melancholic man.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2007

Downfall is an admirably matter-of-fact history lesson of a movie, but next to real footage of real people with real memories of those days, it pales by comparison.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 22, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

An important historical movie about the last days of the Third Reich.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Mar 9, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 14, 2006

Es un atinado recordatorio de que, como humanidad, debimos haber aprendido la lección, pues de otra forma estamos condenados a repetir la historia, para bien o para mal.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 28, 2005

The subject matter itself is the fallback support, which is good enough for its purposes, though it could've benefited from a more steered momentum.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 3, 2005

La película es una nueva y bienvenida mirada hacia eventos históricos que nos han sido contados prácticamente en exclusiva desde el bando ganador.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 13, 2005

There have been plenty of World War II films over the years, but none delivers as intimate a portrait of German dictator Adolf Hitler and his comrades.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Aug 4, 2005