57
Metascore
26 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- The Burnt Orange Heresy stunts as a thriller, but it’s most intriguing when it gives way to soulful questioning of the career of criticism, a profession subjective enough to dodge checks and balances and neglect the significance of honesty, if it so chooses.
- 83The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloThe A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloIn short, this is fundamentally a movie of surface pleasures, placing gorgeous actors in an equally stunning location and letting them parry with sharp words and lithe, angular bodies.
- 75Slant MagazineChuck BowenSlant MagazineChuck BowenThe film allows that we are complicit in privilege for our fascination and envy.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijThe Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijThe screenplay and the actors ooze charm as well as intelligence early on but the second half is more like a sleek thriller, something that's efficient but less jocular and surprising.
- 60TheWrapMonica CastilloTheWrapMonica CastilloWhat really sets The Burnt Orange Heresy ablaze is the chemistry between Bang, Debicki and Sutherland. Each of their characters functions as a sort of walking puzzle, their motives slowly revealing themselves only as the story develops.
- 50Screen DailyLee MarshallScreen DailyLee MarshallFor all the commitment that Claes Bang and Elizabeth Debicki bring to the central roles, their characters never really emerge as autonomous beings from the faintly preposterous story they’re trapped in.
- 50VarietyGuy LodgeVarietyGuy LodgeWatching The Burnt Orange Heresy, you may find yourself wishing one of two things: that Claes Bang and Elizabeth Debicki had been around to make elegant little mystery capers with Alfred Hitchcock in his prime, or that Hitch were around today to direct this one, a marble-cool art-fraud thriller that begins lithely and sexily before, somewhat mystifyingly, it takes a terminal turn for the dour.
- 50The New YorkerAnthony LaneThe New YorkerAnthony LaneEverything’s in place, and there’s not a weak link in the cast, with Debicki — lofty, playful, and unreadable — in especially beguiling form. The idea that art, like love, is something that you can make or fake, and that surprisingly few people can tell the difference, will always be ripe for exploration. And yet the movie stumbles.
- 50Los Angeles TimesMichael RechtshaffenLos Angeles TimesMichael RechtshaffenThe seductively photographed and well-acted production simply can’t gloss over the inconsistencies in the Scott B. Smith-credited adaptation, which pile up higher than all those discarded cigarette butts.
- 42IndieWireDavid EhrlichIndieWireDavid EhrlichBorrowing from a dozen better movies as it tries to blur the line between a forgery and a masterpiece, Capotondi’s film manages to undercut its thesis with each new stroke.