Metacritic-Rezensionen

A bleak but powerful, carefully controlled detective thriller in which — as with all the best noirs — there are no real heroes or villains, only various states of compromise.

Black Coal, Thin Ice is a majestic neo-noir.

If Diao’s intent on confounding us, he has the courtesy to do it with frequently astonishing style and verve.

If the plotting was only more coherent and audience-friendly and the story-telling more disciplined, the film's extraordinarily complex atmosphere would be irresistible.

The odd rhythm of very fast and slick followed by very slow and arty is difficult to settle into, and the film ultimately frustrates, willfully obscuring the apparatus of what appears at first to be a promising film noir framework.

It never quite catches fire, but it has a curious atmosphere of its own: menacing, pregnant with unease.

The final reel is visually interesting in ways nobody could anticipate; it is also smugly perplexing, as if the filmmaker took joy from the knowledge virtually nobody would understand it.

Black Coal, Thin Ice may well floor some viewers, as it did the Berlin jury. But others will find it too obtuse and remote, its characters too withdrawn to be relatable. See it, though, for those fleeting, unforgettable visual touches.