Metacritic reviews

It’s a gorgeously and grippingly made picture and Tang Wei is magnificent.

Crafted with unforced humor, ravishing visuals and commanding maturity, Decision to Leave intoxicates with its potent brew of love, emotional manipulation — or is it? —and obsession.

Park’s funny, playful, and increasingly poignant crime thriller is less interested in what Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) knows about his suspect than in how he feels about her

Decision to Leave is ultimately a seductive romance, one made all the more fascinating by the boundaries the characters tread but never dare cross. Stories of longing are so tantalizing because they hang in that gray space of potential. The build-up is often more gratifying than the release, and Park wrings it for all its worth.

With this seductive, serpentine neo-noir, Park Chan-wook raises the bar on the 2022 Cannes competition programme and reasserts his position as a peerless visual stylist. But there’s nothing superficial or superfluous about his style here: it’s all in the service of the film’s mercurial and at times disorientating blend of crime and passion.

A master filmmaker mines cinema’s glamorous past in a nostalgic neo-noir you don’t so much watch as surrender to.

The investigation is exquisitely constructed, with a stream of revelations, some pulse-pounding action and continuous glimmers of wry humour. It's also a model of elegance and restraint.

The shot-making is sensational, and the film knows it; the camera does things you’ve never seen before, say with focus in an interrogation room mirror, and the whole saga’s edited as though Park can’t wait to show you what’s up his sleeve.

Richly dramatic and at times confounding, it’s a gorgeous piece of work that has the ability to move you in one moment and leave you cold in the next.

This is not as surprising or innovative as director Park's earlier work, but it is still a fascinating and exquisitely directed film about desire, regret, and love. The final moments will likely be talked about and discussed as much as any of his other work.