Critics reviews

A taut, cleverly tailored piece of filmmaking.

An expertly paced dramatic thriller crafted around what could easily been a generic narrative. A triptych of perspective based characterizations coalesce into an arresting finale engendering Verzi’s foreboding title.

More than anything, Human Capital is about the causes people take up as crucial: winning a high-school award, achieving riches, saving a theater, saving a life. Its strength is in the way Virzí treats these unequal goals even-handedly, showing with minimal judgment how his characters blinker themselves by focusing on one and losing outside perspective.

There is some great fancy footwork in the narrative and fierce satirical strokes that recall Tom Wolfe.

Human Capital gives the tired trope of cutting between overlapping stories a welcome shot of adrenaline, using it not just to compare and contrast tangentially related stories, but to show how people caught up in their private dramas can overlook or misinterpret the people around them—especially those who have less power, whether because of their gender, their class, their age, or some combination of the three.

Perfectly cast with actors who give life to very recognizable Italian types, “Capital” confirms Paolo Virzi as one of the more dynamic directors on the peninsula, blending biting commentary with expert narrational skills.