Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.
The story has been filmed many times, but never with this kind of erotic charge. Knightley is glorious, her eyes blazing with a carnal yearning that can turn vindictive at any perceived slight. Read full review
In making the radical artistic choice to tell the story as if it were being enacted by players on a stage, Wright falls passionately in love with his own fanciful artifices. Read full review
Scripted by playwright Tom Stoppard, the film labors to fit Tolstoy's sprawling story into its two hour and ten minute runtime by drawing its characters with minimal lines. Read full review
Inner life comes hard to Knightley, and she never gets a grip on the mounting emotional turmoil that threatens to crush Anna as she progresses from stylish young hipster-about-town to kept woman to bereft mother to paranoid social pariah. Read full review
The new film staggers under such a weight of self-conscious visual style that the story never connects with a viewer's emotions. Leo Tolstoy's classic novel has been filmed often, but this is the first time it takes place in a snow globe. Read full review
Though energetic, daring and gorgeous to behold, this re-imagining of Tolstoy's classic tale lacks a viable sense of passion, holding the characters at arm's length and glossing over social issues. Read full review
The film's structure is so boldly conceived it seems unfair to focus on flaws. But the central problem is undeniable: There is no chemistry whatsoever between the leads. Read full review
Dazzlingly designed and staged in a theatrical setting so as to suggest that the characters are enacting assigned roles in life, this tight and pacy telling of a 900 page-plus novel touches a number of its important bases but lacks emotional depth, moral resonance and the simple ability to allow its rich characters to experience and drink deeply of life. Read full review
This latest iteration of the Tolstoy classic was clearly the product of audacious thinking, stylishly applied. Still, the thinking was as wrongheaded as it was hollow-hearted. Yet another elaborate production chases its audience away. Read full review
You know there is something seriously wrong with Anna Karenina when you start rooting for the train. Read full review
2.0
Dave White Profile
Too much and not enough. Read full review
Exclusive Cast Interview Keira Knightley talks about her "tricky" character, Jude Law on his passive-aggressive role and Joe Wright on filming the movie on a stage. More Films on Fandango's Award Watch A sneak peek at Hollywood's race to the Oscars!