Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

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.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Pierre Radulescu It starts like a film noir, a scene of robbery with an absurd outcome, excellently shot, with an incredible rhythm, with guts, and one could expect the movie will go on this way, kind of Quentin Tarantino on the steroids. Actually this starting scene, coming again at the end, is the moment of explosion in the story.Crimson Gold, released in 2003, with Jafar Panahi as director and Abbas Kiarostami as screenwriter; it is the second movie of this tandem that I've watched (the other was The White Balloon). Two films showing a society that rejects the people who don't fit in the canons. In The White Balloon it's the Afghan boy (only there the idea is subtly hidden up to the end). Here in Crimson Gold, it's Hussein, the pizza delivery guy, who is played by a non-professional, Hossain Emadeddin. Like his personage, he is in real life a pizza delivery man. Like his personage, he is under medication for a form of schizophrenia. His performance is remarkable. Looking always like he's carrying all his household with him everywhere he goes, while able exactly this way to induce the feeling that he is his own guy. Silent, quiet, apparently in total selfcontrol, while able exactly this way to communicate to us his terrible tensions that boil in himself and make him a walking time-bomb.As a schizophrenic, Hussein sees the society through his own mirror (and the idea of shooting him so often through the shield of his motorbike is genial). Actually, that shield acts both ways: Hussein is in turn the perfect mirror of the society surrounding him. It is a society sick of the same schizophrenia, an absurd universe where everybody is hostile to all the others, parents are denouncing their children, police arrest anybody for anything, simple people float freely toward petty crime, rich people are surrounded by a richness that is absurd by lack of meaning.Each sequence of the movie calls for a moment of disruption, you cannot stand to such absurdity, you have to explode, and there are small disruptions all along, culminating with the big one, the failed robbery.It's not only about Iran, as many reviewers consider. This film is a metaphor, and a metaphor is universal. The movie is banned in Iran while its director was not allowed to enter US to assist at the screening there. Director Jafar Panahi is banned in his own country and is suspected elsewhere as coming from his own country.The robbery scene that links the beginning and the end of the movie shows a universe that is circular with no way to escape (also in The White Balloon the first and the last scenes are the same). It's an extremely nihilistic movie: there is no superior order (cosmic or divine) to show us the way, to offer us solace, to teach us higher wisdom. The whole universe is a walking time-bomb.

Behzad Written by the most prominent figure in Iranian social realist cinema, Talaye Sorkh is very much suggestive of some social realities in contemporary Iran. Following an underclass pizza-delivery man for a day or two of his life, Panahi's camera pictures a story that speaks only not for Hussein, but also for many of his real-life fellow citizens in Tehran. Although the film appears to be highly critical of the current social gap between the rich and the poor, Talaye Sorkh is more about alienation and marginalization. Hussein is a war veteran who is devastated by the contradictions of the values he fought for in the Iran-Iraq war and what he witnesses in the affluent neighborhoods of northern Tehran, where he delivers pizzas. He is shocked to see a former lieutenant in one of those chic houses. Thanks to Hussein Emaduddin's great performance, the film by no means begs for sympathy. It seems that the tensions of the society in which Hussein lives, has made him an emotionless man. Hussein's toneless attitude and his unusual calmness speaks of a man whose tolerance comes to a rapid explosion at the end. He is a sort of man who is unable to even feel for his fiancé. Robbing young women's purse doesn't seem to interest him either. Throughout the entire film he is in a state of shock. Although the film's plot is based on a true story, its dialog seem a bit incompetent and weak at times. The dolly shots and the overall camera-work however perfectly contributes in suggesting a schizophrenic atmosphere which has indeed been the intention of Panahi as well. Panahi's latest film is very much similar in theme with his previous award winning Dayareh. That film is also recommended for those who enjoyed this one.

houman1983 It is regrettable that some comments have described the movie as boring and tedious. In the west, we have been raised with a version of cinema presented by Hollywood that provides quick indulgence and satisfaction; well not only cinema, a lot others as well. Movies that lack this characteristic, being ironically closer to reality and providing an insight into the world we live in, are judged as "weak," and "boring." Allegorical cinema is the strongest cinema no question, and Iranian cinema has been an efflux of such examples during the past decade; "Crimson Gold" is a perfect example.It might come out as strange, but for a change, a movie has been able to capture the real life, the real social struggles of the society; and this doesn't just pertain to the Iranian society, but the description is one of ecumenical. The pace matches the pace of real life, as one other commentator put it so eloquently, it SHOULD be slow, and it SHOULD be agonizing to watch it, simply because that's what the movie is trying to portray, and that's how real life is experienced. The slow pace of the movie, following every move of the main character, makes the movie even more poignant. One can put self in Hussain's shoes, and feel the pain and humiliation he feels when he walks into the Jewlery store, case in point.

hyegodfather818 Crimson Gold, one of the best films of the year, is absolutely stunning from start to finish. It's gritty and captures the essence of the social struggles in Iran while consistently delivering messages on the struggles we all face in life regarding love and relationships. It's a humanistic film that is extremely subtle, which turned off several viewers (as does Taxi Driver, one of my all-time favorites). Jafar Panahi's slow pacing doesn't allow the film to go into incoherent territory, but again, some viewers may be turned off by this. The pacing is really what allows the messages to set in and provoke the viewers thoughts. It's worth every second of your time, don't miss this gem.9/10