Metacritic reviews

By refracting Brian De Palma’s self-reflexiveness and the Coen brothers’ mordant fatalism through the prism of his most personal obsessions, Schimberg creates a house of mirrors so brilliant and complex that it becomes impossible to match any of his characters to their own reflections, and absolutely useless to reduce the movie around them to the stuff of moral instruction.

Some people will always want what they do not have, but it is hard to imagine anyone feeling short-changed by such a tonally rich, thematically ambitious film.

A movie that’s about—and asks its lead to literally and figuratively wear—masks, A Different Man is a multifaceted meta mind-melter.

The story’s twists and turns maintain our interest throughout, with the narrative taking on a cleverly deconstructed play-within-a-film format reminiscent, at times, of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York.

With A Different Man, Schimberg attempts — and mostly succeeds, with deliciously awkward results — to cram a lifetime of thoughts about beauty and ugliness, attraction and disgust, identity and performance into a postmodern meta-film mold that few (apart from Charlie Kaufman, perhaps) have managed to make tolerable.

A Different Man is a fascinating exploration of humanity with Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson being a team I want to see reunite in other works. The climax is a tad underwhelming but overall it’s a rollicking ride worth experiencing.

Schimberg’s exploration of identity and representation has the best of intentions, but the more audacious aspects of A Different Man often overwhelm the interesting themes at the center of the film.

The final result is a messy but memorable effort, with Stan, Pearson, and Reinsve giving performances that are anything but skin-deep.

The third act often feels more like a cinematic exercise than a filmmaker who has something to say.

A Different Man is a slog, made worse by the fact that it seems to mistake darkness for insight.