99 Homes
Broad Green Pictures | Release Date: September 25, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
76
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallOct 8, 2015
99 Homes combines the insight of documentary filmmaking with a thriller's urgency, opening our eyes to a complex, real-life tragedy while keeping it entertaining. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 2, 2015
The movie works as a twinned character study, a moral suspense thriller, and an indictment of an America stacked against its working classes. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottSep 24, 2015
If 99 Homes is a scolding look at a society gone astray, it is also a minor masterpiece of suspense, as tightly wound as “Sicario,” Denis Villeneuve’s white-knuckle drug-war thriller, and almost as brutal. Read full review
91
The PlaylistJessica KiangSep 1, 2014
99 Homes is by no means a perfect film, but it can achieve something more precious, and rarer than glossy perfection: it can take you by the shoulders and shake the apathy and complacency away. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonOct 8, 2015
Aside from art-house fare, American movies of recent decades have tended to ignore even the most urgent social problems. Despite its lapses into melodrama, 99 Homes is a thought-provoking exception. Read full review
88
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 7, 2015
Of all the scary guys Michael Shannon has ever played — sociopaths, murderers, hell, even General Zod in a Superman movie — none is more frightening that his character in 99 Homes. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleySep 25, 2015
Michael Shannon is both ruthless and strangely tender in his seemingly irredeemable character. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc MohanOct 8, 2015
There's a Gordon Gekko vibe to Shannon's reptilian, charismatic villain. Like Oliver Stone's "Wall Street," 99 Homes understands that people don't sell their souls because they're inherently evil — they do it because being rich is cool. Read full review
80
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottOct 8, 2015
Still, none of that holds back Bahrani's film from becoming a thought-provoking treatise on the self-perpetuating and dehumanizing nature of greed, which more often than not spawns desperation in others, which in turn spawns greed, which spawns more desperation, which spawns greed ... Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzOct 8, 2015
[A] searing, perversely thrilling drama. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranOct 1, 2015
Because of its strong dialogue and convincing acting, 99 Homes stays on point for quite some time, artfully disguising the film's increasing reliance on plot devices. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierSep 25, 2015
Urgent as a heart attack and as timely as the headlines, 99 Homes is one of those films that make other "topical" dramas look tinny. This astute, intense drama boasts sharp performances and belongs in the same company as films like "Margin Call" and "Michael Clayton" -- contemporary stories whose of-the-moment nature only makes their great parts better. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinSep 25, 2015
Bahrani’s casting of Dern is genius. She’s such a profoundly unaffected actress that you instantly buy her aversion to her son’s lucre. She has a moral and aesthetic problem with that tacky mansion on the waterway. She wouldn’t fit in there. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternSep 24, 2015
A relatively small, tough-minded drama about pitiless people doing unprincipled things, proves to be one of the most interesting, elegantly crafted and — paradoxically, given the dark subject matter — elating films to come along in recent memory. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 22, 2015
A timely, terrifically acted moral nail-biter. Read full review
80
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlSep 22, 2015
The film is more closing argument than portrait of life in the downturn, but it's thrillingly vigorous in its damning. Read full review
80
EmpireAdam SmithSep 21, 2015
Some plot developments are more convincing than others, but it’s still a compelling drama with an impressive turn from Garfield as well as Shannon and Dern as Garfield’s concerned mother. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleSep 1, 2014
[Bahrani's] created a complex and thoughtful political drama with the speed and tension of a good thriller. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 1, 2014
This is a tough, muscular, idealistic drama that packs a mighty punch, and Shannon and Garfield are excellent. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 2, 2015
At its best, 99 Homes finds Bahrani tightening the screws on his own style, going for speed, concision and an agitating rhythm where his previous films took their time. I hope he'll go on to make movies combining the vital aspects of all his work. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 1, 2015
A provocative, visceral, sometimes heartbreakingly relevant drama/thriller. Read full review
75
Washington PostStephanie MerryOct 1, 2015
99 Homes isn’t just a straightforward drama. It’s a suspense movie. Read full review
75
HitfixCatherine BraySep 2, 2014
Other than the unsubtle but vivid storytelling, the main joy of 99 Homes is seeing two excellent but very different actors spark off each other for almost the entire runtime, in a brace of performances both brilliant and brilliantly matched. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthySep 1, 2014
An urgent work, the burning anger of which will viscerally connect with many viewers, who will recognize themselves or people they know up on the screen. Read full review
70
VarietyGuy LodgeSep 1, 2014
This dynamically acted, unapologetically contrived pic reps the filmmaker’s best chance to date of connecting with a wider audience — one likely to share the helmer’s bristling anger over corruptly maintained class divides in modern-day America. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversSep 25, 2015
Before it goes off the rails in the final stretch, 99 Homes is a riveting rabble-rouser that thinks it can make a difference. In these days when Hollywood typically dulls our wits, Ramin Bahrani's 99 Homes has a fire in its belly. It's spoiling to be heard. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineCarson LundSep 21, 2015
Ramin Bahrani's talent for orchestrating sequences of tightly wound tension is in full bloom here, as is his complementary knack for quieter grace notes. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Sep 23, 2015
While its righteous rage is bracing, fans of the filmmaker Bahrani used to be will mourn the subtlety and careful character development of his early triumphs. His heart remains in the right place, but his head has gone hopelessly Hollywood. Read full review
57
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeSep 1, 2014
Bahrani (and co-writer Amir Naderi) want the audience to go to the dark side with them without losing their faith in the system. To anyone who has watched this crisis unfold over the last decade, it will feel like a cheat. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle SmithSep 24, 2015
There might be a great movie to be made out of the financial crisis, but 99 Homes, which is like being shouted at by a man with bad breath while he grips your collar with both hands, isn’t it. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovOct 7, 2015
Iwish I could say 99 Homes delivers a shockingly good sucker punch to the American electorate and a stand-up-and-cheer piece of socially conscious filmmaking, but it’s not. It lacks the satisfactory denouement of, for instance, Michael Mann’s The Insider (and Garfield is no Russell Crowe), in part because the events it depicts are still happening across the country (albeit to a lesser extent). Read full review
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