“Secret in Their Eyes” already has to compete with one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises on its opening weekend, and critics’ reviews of the thriller won’t be helping the film’s fortunes.The movie currently holds a 39 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while this weekend’s other newcomers, “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2” and “The Night Before,” boast fresh ratings of 71 and 67 percent, respectively. Critics say “Secret in Their Eyes,” also starring and, is “miscast,” “flat” and “barely flutters to life.”. Scott Tobias,:“Yet for all the film’s intelligence and conceptual rigor, it barely flutters to life. The emotions at play in this story  are curiously muted, as if dramatizing them with any kind of panache would be the height of vulgarity. ‘Secret in Their Eyes’  does what it can to tweak the original for American audiences, but like so many other remakes, it winds up going through the motions.”Tom Russo,:“What’s ironic — and frustrating — is how precipitously the movie itself eventually goes tumbling down the intelligence scale. In the process, is wasted, along with some potent moments from costars Roberts and.”.

Stephanie Merry,:“As FBI agent Jess in ‘Secret in Their Eyes,’ Roberts arrives at a murder scene only to find that the dead body lying face down in a dumpster is her teen daughter. It’s a horrifying scenario, and Roberts doesn’t act so much as lay bare a mother’s unthinkable, nearly unwatchable anguish. She screams, sobs, pleads and throws herself into the bin to cradle her girl one last time. It’s enough to take your breath away. Godswar weapon rank. It’s also the only memorable moment in a movie that transforms thrilling source material  into a straightforward procedural better suited for prime-time television.”Michael Phillips,:“In the languid remake ‘Secret in Their Eyes,’ the awkward missing ‘The’ in its title poses a more intriguing mystery than anything on the screen. If you’ve never seen the 2009 original from Argentina  do. It’s extremely high-grade pulp, satisfying as a romance and a crime drama. Writer-director ‘s Americanized redux isn’t a disaster, exactly; it keeps its head down and does its job.

But nothing quite gels, or clicks, or makes itself at home in its adopted setting.”Moira MacDonald,:“The new Hollywood film ‘Secret in Their Eyes’ is, on the other hand, a standard movie-star thriller, neither particularly good nor cheerfully terrible; it’s like a pale, limp memory of the original film, its colors faded, its distinction wrung out in the wash.”See Video:Josh Bell,:“Ejiofor projects determination as a man obsessed with solving a long-forgotten case, but he can’t make the relationship between Ray and Claire work. Kidman and Roberts, however, are both completely wrong for their roles as, respectively, an ambitious yet empathetic lawyer and a traumatized mother seeking vengeance.

Secret in Their Eyes Review. By Rich Cline. It's rare for an American remake to be scruffier than the original, but this film is an intriguingly messier take on the super-slick, hugely engaging.

Without strong, believable characters, ‘Secret in Their Eyes’ is just a generic thriller, the kind of movie that won’t even be remembered — let alone win an award — come Oscar time.”Tim Grierson,:“Writer-director has assembled a fine ensemble headed by, and, which only makes the awkwardness of this ill-conceived misfire all the more uncomfortable. In studying how the death of a teenager 13 years ago still eats away at its central characters, ‘Secret’ never rises above cable-movie pulp, a lot of dour emoting adding up to very little actual drama.”Mick LaSalle,:“The Argentine version, by the way, took place over a span of 25 years, a more poetic stretch of time and representing a huge portion of the characters’ adult lives, but difficult to convey onscreen while using the same actors.

By shortening the stretch to 13 years, the American film makes things more plausible — and yet with every improvement, some magic is lost. In ‘Secret in Their Eyes,’ we get a story that has been improved almost to the point of nonexistence. That’s the mystery of art, the delicate and intricate alchemy of success. Fix all the flaws and you can end up wrecking the whole thing.”Robert Abele,:“As screenwriter, ‘s adapting the original’s Argentina-centric trappings to a tense post-9/11 milieu is smart, but as director his style is hardly atmospheric. It’s ironic that Campanella’s movie was a sly mix of tones — office romance, conspiracy thriller, brooding murder mystery — befitting someone breaking free of directing ‘Law & Order’ episodes, whereas the remake hits marks exactly like a TV procedural.”.