Variety
Scripter Lund, himself an ex-teacher, delivers a story that lacks nuance, and mixes badly with Kaye's impatient edits, Dutch angles and extreme close-ups.
Full review
Detachment
Adrien Brody is a drifting substitute teacher who finds uneasy connections with his new students in this intense classroom drama from the director American History X. Also stars Marcia Gay Harden, James Caan and Lucy Liu.
Henry (Brody) is transferred to yet another school, where an indifferent management has filled the classrooms with lethargic students and potential burnouts. Having avoided building relationships with prior students, Henry realises that his apathetic methods will be of no use here. His longing sense of attachment slowly starts to emerge with the aid of three women: photography enthusiast Meredith, a student of his, Ms. Madison, a fellow teacher, and Erica, a sidewalk prostitute.
2011Rating: R16, Violence, sexual material, suicide & offensive language97 minsUSA
Drama
- Director:
- Tony Kaye ('American History X', 'Lake of Fire')
- Writer:
- Carl Lund
- Cast:
- Adrien BrodyMarcia Gay HardenJames CaanChristina HendricksLucy LiuBlythe DannerTim Blake NelsonWilliam PetersenBryan Cranston
Detachment / Reviews
Rolling Stone
Adrien Brody deserves superlatives for his acting in the alternately mesmerizing and maddening Detachment.
Full reviewLos Angeles Times
A movie you keep expecting to fizzle because of its punching-the-air gracelessness, but there's something weirdly effective about the artistic desperation, which includes inserts of chalkboard animation and to-the-camera testimonials.
Full review
A.V. Club
For all its untrammeled excesses - and Kaye has proved that he'd sooner torpedo his own career than accept a little constructive trammeling - Detachment is almost forcibly moving, body-slamming its audience into submission.
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