SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

ThurstonHunger Saw this a couple of years ago and it has stuck with me. The pedigree of Kiriostami and Panahiri is excellent but Hossain Emadeddin as a non-actor in the primary role is what won me over.Starting with a brutal bad situation going worse, to me is there to underscore the sealed fate for a working class stiff in Tehran, and really many cities.His primary contrast is not so much the jeweler but the rich bachelor who invited Hussein into his wonderland world during a pizza delivery. And there is something about the pizza delivery job that allows Hussein, and us the viewers aspects of moving through cultures, class and checkpoints.Another powerful scene comes with Hussein trapped behind a police sting, and thus failing at his primary job...but out of good nature reaching out to the Comiteh. Very powerful in a subtle way...And again the non-actor Hossain, carrying the weight of the world possibly folded into his own girth, and perhaps a nod to Iran/Iraq war (his blinking awkward health might have been good casting, or just a tough life bleeding through on the film).It's not a happy film, or even a dynamic film in terms of a window on another culture, or a revolutionary change in an individual. But again the struggle for Hussein to find some small dignity, some small purpose and some love in a large crushing world had me rooting so strongly for him, despite the pre-ordained and projected fate.Again the fact that I feel compelled to review this after a couple of years to me is a hearty endorsement for this film, but I understand others here less thrilled with this film.

ninamohadjer This was a very interesting and well done movie. I was impressed how the director was able to capture the class clash in the country and how he used Hossein to show the differences of people who live in the same geographical region. While Hossein is mostly used as the "camera" the director shows how the classes have distanced each other and how small a "midlle" class has become in Iran of post 1979. I was mostly impressed by the scene within the jewelry store how the store owner treats two couples completely different, without haven had a full 5 sentence conversation with any of them, but justifying his behavior and ' customer service' simply on the class of his customers.

rdburgo i just saw this movie yesterday and the question was on my mind all the time, why the camera follow this pizza driver all the time? OK if the director needs to show us something important i agree he must guide us to "see", but in this case i felt bored and cheated because following this guy i didn't see anything. i didn't get the character, i don't know anything about his life, nothing at all, sorry but i don't understand it.anyway it is good to see like curiosity as i have seen in other movie (the mirror) that the capital is a chaos of a city in terms of circulation and how oppressed they are for the religion...

Howard Schumann Winner of the Jury Award at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival but sadly banned in Iran, Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold shows the growing chasm in Iran between rich and poor and the psychological effects of living under a regime based on fundamentalist religion. Written by famous Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, it is based on a newspaper account of a similar incident that took place several years ago in Tehran. The film opens inside a jewelry store where a robbery is taking place. As a crowd gathers, the robber is trapped when the security system is released and the bars close over the front door. Flashbacks then show the events that led up to the crime and the film speculates as to what might have led to this act of desperation.Hussein (Hossain Emadeddin), an alienated heavy set man who hides his emotions, is a pizza deliveryman in Tehran who takes cortisone shots to relieve the pain of injuries sustained in the Iran-Iraq War. He is engaged to be married to his friend Ali's (Kamyar Sheissi) sister but they communicate little. Ali is a thief who snatches women's purses but is an amateur bungler who rarely scores a big take. On examining the contents of a purse with Hussein at a restaurant, they discover the receipt for an expensive necklace and their fascination leads them to visit the jewelry store where it was purchased. When the owner refuses to let them in the store because of their dress, resentment boils.Another incident reinforces this hurt. Hussein is forced by security police to wait outside a building as they arrest people attending a party for allegedly violating the social code of the regime that prohibits men and women from dancing together. Though he good-naturedly hands out pizzas to the police and the detainees waiting outside the building, he is upset at the manner in which he is treated. A bizarre final sequence raises Hussein's anger to the breaking point. He delivers a pizza to a lavish penthouse apartment where he is invited in by the wealthy tenant (Pourang Nakaheal), a young man who recently returned to Iran after staying with his parents in the U.S. The man, who appears to be lonely, talks incessantly, complaining about the "city of lunatics" he has returned to. As the young man chats on the cell phone, Hussein wanders through the house amazed at its affluence. He finds a rooftop swimming pool and jumps in fully clothed, then sits on the roof simply gazing at the city below. Fuming inwardly, the very next day he walks into the jewelry store with a loaded gun.Crimson Gold bravely depicts the powerlessness of the individual in an authoritarian society, yet Hussein's emotional repressiveness and the telegraphing of the final outcome dilutes the film's tension, almost to the point of lethargy. To his credit, Panahi makes a strong statement but does not wallow in polemics, making it clear that the crime results from a combination of both social and psychological factors. Hussein is not an ordinary individual beaten down by the system but a walking time bomb, a man physically and mentally damaged by the war, uncommunicative, and humiliated by each slight, no matter how minor. Like Hussein, Panahi knows something about the feeling of being trapped and humiliated and his experience lends immediacy to the film. In 2001, the director was detained, then chained to a bench for ten hours because he refused to be fingerprinted and photographed by US authorities at JFK airport, a reminder that assaults upon human dignity are not limited to a single country.