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Everybody Knows Movie Review

Everybody Knows is a 2018 Spanish mystery crime drama film directed by Asghar Farhadi and starring Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz. It is far from the director’s best works.

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“It’s time that gives character,

from personality to wine“

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Laura, who lives in Buenos Aires, comes to her home country of Spain with her husband and two children. Her eldest daughter is abducted and numerous secrets begin to open. This was the second international movie from Farhadi and here he unfortunately continued that tradition of weaker efforts in different markets. While this film has its strengths, it also has its glaring flaws that prevented it from reaching greatness.

The dialogue is great. That is the best aspect of the film. Farhadi always writes superb dialogue and here all the conversations are both moving and believable. The emotional investment is also evident throughout the movie as you can really sense the pain and tragedy of the people involved.

As for the acting, Penelope Cruz does get to play one note a bit too much here. She is consistently heartbroken and terrified here, but she did give a strong performance regardless. Javier Bardem is also very good and the two make for excellent pairing here. Ricardo Darin and Barbara Lennie impress in smaller roles.

The movie definitely works in the drama department. Whenever it focuses on dialogue and emotions, it was quite strong as you’d expect from a Farhadi picture. However, in there lies an obvious flaw – this story was supposed to be a thriller of sorts. But it failed miserably in that department as it lacked the suspense that is required of that genre.

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The overall mystery wasn’t particularly interesting and whenever the film focused on it, the results weren’t satisfactory. I also had a big problem with its major twist. It felt beyond soapy and very unfortunate. I get that he wanted to imbue the movie with some Spanishness, but this was not the way to go. It was unnecessary and silly at the same time. The pacing is also quite slow and the movie simply lacked the immediacy and intensity of the director’s best works.

While Everybody Knows features expectedly terrific dialogue, strong acting performances across the board and an emotional drama at its core, the movie fails as a crime thriller because it is lacking in the suspense department. It also features an overly soapy middle act twist. As a result, it is far from Asghar Farhadi’s best works.

My Rating – 3.5