The Catcher Was a Spy

IFC Films | Release Date: June 22, 2018

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

49	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 27 Critics

Positive:

Mixed:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenJul 25, 2018

It’s an absorbing character study of a most intriguing man. Read full review

ObserverRex ReedJun 26, 2018

The result is a juicy true story told blandly, but The Catcher Was a Spy is still a movie worth seeing. Read full review

UproxxVince Mancini

The film doesn’t try to alter Berg’s most essential quality, that he was a mystery. Read full review

The New York TimesGlenn KennyJun 21, 2018

Paul Rudd plays Berg with the droll, boyish charm he’s brought to dozens of other roles, but he adds a protective coating. This movie, directed by Ben Lewin from a Robert Rodat script (one adapted from Nicholas Dawidoff’s fascinating 1994 biography of Berg), relishes Berg’s compulsion to remain an enigma even to those closest to him Read full review

The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeFore

This is a very enjoyable middle-of-the-road adventure, especially for moviegoers willing to see just about anything starring Rudd. Read full review

The Film StageDan Mecca

Where Spy succeeds the most is in the first half. Rudd is top-notch, playing Berg as a tragic sort jailed in his own mind, internally fighting and assimilating to a world that cannot accept him. Read full review

Movie NationRoger MooreJun 17, 2018

The movie is imminently watchable, and the surface sheen is fine, but the real Berg remains more mystery than man with a mission. Read full review

New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJun 22, 2018

The movie is well-crafted, but it doesn’t have the fullness you’d expect in a movie with so much believe-it-or-not weirdness. It feels more like a nifty anecdote. Read full review

The GuardianJordan Hoffman

The film isn’t a home run, but with Rudd in the lead in something so out of the ordinary for him, it’s fair to call a ground rule double. Read full review

Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyJun 20, 2018

Sadly, it isn’t a great movie. It’s a disappointingly mild period thriller that’s light on thrills. Even Paul Rudd, one of the most likable actors in Hollywood, can’t rescue it. Read full review

Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJun 22, 2018

The Catcher Was a Spy, directed by Ben Lewin and starring Paul Rudd as the Ivy-educated Berg, who was fluent in seven languages, is a much more pallid experience than this eminently juicy subject deserves. Read full review

RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzJun 22, 2018

Unfortunately, the film never finds a way into Berg's personality that explores his many facets without reducing him to a blank-slate character at the center of a traditionally-made period thriller. Read full review

The A.V. ClubKatie RifeJun 21, 2018

Flavorless and unexciting, thanks to an execution as formulaic as a well-worn copy of "The Joy Of Cooking." Read full review

Los Angeles TimesMichael RechtshaffenJun 20, 2018

While the always affable Rudd is up to the more serious task at hand, the overly studied direction by Australian Ben Lewin frustratingly keeps the audience at arm’s length from both its lead and that surprising chain of events, which feel as palpably pieced together as the stitching on Berg’s baseballs. Read full review

San Francisco ChronicleDavid LewisJun 20, 2018

Director Ben Lewin has crafted a biopic spy thriller, kind of, but the script has neither the character shadings to be a biopic nor the pacing and twist and turns to be a spy thriller. Read full review

Boston GlobeTy BurrJun 20, 2018

How do you make a boring movie about this guy? Beats me, but director Ben Lewin has managed to pull it off. Based on Nicholas Dawidoff’s 1994 biography of the same title, The Catcher Was a Spy is a decorous, dutiful dogtrot that tells Berg’s story with excellent production values and a conspicuous lack of energy. In its tastefully dull fashion it wastes not only a fascinating subject but the mercurial actor playing him. Read full review

Rolling StoneDavid FearJun 20, 2018

Boring is the last word you should use for a sports-hero-turned-spy story like this; it's the only one that comes to mind after you've seen the film. Read full review

Washington PostMichael O'SullivanJun 19, 2018

Ironically, the film is conspicuous not for its brio but its blandness. Read full review

The New YorkerRichard BrodyJun 18, 2018

The script, by Robert Rodat, skips around in time to elucidate the amped-up drama, but it never gets close to Berg’s own character. The film, directed by Ben Lewin, strongly suggests that Berg was gay, but leaves the theme undeveloped. Read full review

Slant MagazineChuck BowenJun 14, 2018

As the film proceeds, the appeal of its nostalgia wears thin and you may notice that there isn't much beyond the window dressing. Read full review

VarietyDennis Harvey

There’s a curious lack of credibility and urgency in this big-screen adaptation, the kind of respectable near-miss that can happen when worthy talent apply themselves to a project they’re just not ideally suited for. Read full review

TheWrapWilliam BibbianiJun 21, 2018

Berg’s life is a natural for the movies, but it’s difficult to imagine how the film we got out of it turned out so dramatically inert. Read full review

Film Journal InternationalHarry HaunJun 21, 2018

The game plan seems to be to make the film as impenetrable as possible so no one will notice it is actually flatlining over pretty familiar turf. Read full review

Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghJun 21, 2018

The imagery is romantically period, with textured scenes staged in handsomely lit smoke-filled rooms, its newsreels and baseball stadiums suffused with charming Americana. But you can’t root for set design or feel empathy for colored filters. You need human beings for that, and The Catcher Was a Spy keeps its heart under lock and key. Read full review

Village VoiceKristen Yoonsoo KimJun 21, 2018

Lewin’s film is directionless, so muddied by Berg’s bloated résumé that the payoff never comes. Berg was an enigmatic and underappreciated Renaissance Man, and we leave the film not especially enlightened. Read full review

IndieWireDavid EhrlichJun 22, 2018

From the flat battle sequence that’s shot with all the excitement of folding laundry, to the literal chess match that anchors the underwritten dynamic between Berg and his target, The Catcher Was a Spy shrugs through each bad scene as though it’s biding time for better ones to come. Read full review

The PlaylistJordan Ruimy

The spy genre is a tricky business, because the tempo and flow of the film must adapt to numerous different scenarios and narrative changes. In Lewin’s movie, however, the ever-changing intricacies of Dawidoff’s book are rendered flat, unappealing and messy. Read full review