Carnage: Press reviews

'Great acting, sparky satire'

'The work of a master, this wickedly funny film is beautifully orchestrated and controlled.'

'this is a shot of pure, exhilarating cinematic malice.'

'Celebrates an old-fashioned, underrated cinematic pleasure: the chance to see an ensemble cast of fine actors sparring with each other, and at the top of their game.'

'The whole isn't just very funny, it is also highly pertinent'

'a fizzing satire of middle-class pretension'

'Polanski directs with an alertness and mordant wit we haven't seen from him for decades.'

'Polanski's adaptation of Yasmina Reza's play, rapturously received in Venice, is a pitch-black farce of unbearable tension'

'a captivating and comic exercise in confinement and hysteria'

'The result is just as insignificant as the feud it depicts, but in the heat of the moment, it's equally exhilarating'

'At its best, this is a spiky satire on contemporary bourgeois correctness; at its worst, it's a strained piece of upscale dinner theatre, a self-conscious controversy item by, for and about the chattering classes'

'The script is left to compensate and, while it's never less than entertaining, it's neither laugh-out-loud funny nor dark enough to make this anything other than a pleasant distraction.'

'A four-way of furious awkwardness played with consummate skill. '

'should not really be a movie. It should be a parlor game.'

'I don't buy it.'

'The whole affair is so airless, and joyless, that you soon resent every minute it's detaining you.'