Tian zhu ding 2013

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Sin, more stylized than the director's previous work, is also more detached. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: A blistering fictionalized tale straight out of China, "A Touch of Sin" is at once monumental and human scale. Read more

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: "A Touch of Sin" is by no means subtle, but it is composed with a passion and sinuous grace that makes it far more effective than many other sincere message movies. Read more

A.A. Dowd, AV Club: The movie builds repeatedly to crescendo, pushing some desperate individual to the brink and then watching as he or she explodes into violence. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: In two decades of moviemaking, China's Jia Zhangke has examined the damage of his country's explosive growth with a poetic sense of outrage. With his latest effort, the implied violence bubbles over. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Jia's primary concern here is the solitary suffering of his characters, punished to the point where they can't take anymore. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: This masterwork is set in contemporary China, where the gulf between those able to maneuver (or manipulate) the country's economies of change and those left behind or defeated by the seismic shifts widens. Read more

Calum Marsh, Film.com: By far the best action movie of the year. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: A corrosive depiction of the New China, an everything-for-sale society still figuring out how to cope with the dehumanizing effects of unbridled capitalism. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: In addressing the two-pronged beast of westernization / corruption, Jia gives us a multipronged and engrossing set of plots. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: In Jia's methodically furious vision, the ambient violence of unchecked power erupts among the insulted and injured with a horrific yet liberating sense of destruction and self-destruction. Read more

Mark Jenkins, NPR: The most dramatic and even lurid of writer-director Jia Zhangke's movies. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: An art-house film with the body count of a "Die Hard" sequel. Read more

Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle: Jia is passionate about his characters, but that never compromises his considerable artistic control. Read more

Bill Stamets, Chicago Sun-Times: Drawing on four news stories, writer-director Jia Zhangke portrays the plight of workers in the new China. Set in four provinces, A Touch of Sin is humanist critique of the country's turn to capitalism. Read more

Jon Frosch, The Atlantic: A bitter, brutal, often brilliant exploration of violence and corruption in contemporary China. Read more

James Adams, Globe and Mail: Epic and intimate, A Touch of Sin finally feels as big and complex, as contradictory and sad as, well, China. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Fists are raised, pistols are cocked and knives are brandished in Jia Zhangke's dystopian and throbbing take on modern China. Read more

Guy Lodge, Time Out: It's travelogue cinema for the dissolute and gravely disenfranchised. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: Embraces its many contradictions so fully that when the film doesn't work it strangely enough works best. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice: Jia has a knack for orchestrating violence: The brutality is just stylized enough to have a kick, though you always feel its emotional weight. Read more

John DeFore, Washington Post: Jia offers a stark presentation (no music, few edits) that discourages vicarious thrills; the violence is startling, not cool. Read more