Critical reception New Order holds approval rating on review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews, with an average of . The website's critics consensus reads: "In spite of solid performances,
New Order's merciless brutality and unfocused gaze threaten to derail its message." On
Metacritic, the film holds a rating of 62 out of 100, based on 22 critics. Peter Debruge of
Variety said: "Essentially picking up where
The Joker left off, this ultra-provocative case of speculative fiction promises a view of what change might look like, only to succumb to a deep sense of cynicism as the scope of the film becomes unmanageable."
IndieWire gave it a C+, as critic Nicholas Barber wrote: "It's a bold, angry, provocative indictment, but because Franco zooms back to the state-of-the-nation big picture, he loses sight of the characters who were sketched so sharply in the opening scenes. They’re still in the film, but they have so little agency and dialogue that they are reduced to counters on a board". In Spain, newspaper
El País wrote: "The film does not come close to the fine class analysis that
Bong Joon-ho'
s Parasite made, because it fails to increasingly develop the unbearable tension between rich and poor... His chaos scenes are closer to those seen in
Todd Phillips'
Joker, but without an actor like
Joaquin Phoenix to understand the depth of the madness". The sociologist David Leupold also sees a strong parallel between the two films, albeit, arrives at a more positive evaluation: "
New Order begins where
Parasite ends ... In the case of
Parasite we see the story unfolding from the perspective of the dispossessed family whereas in
New Order it is through the perspective of an elite family subjected to violence by the dispossessed. What both films also have in common is the lack of clear moralizing attributes. Neither the elites appear as particularly vicious nor the disempowered as heroic ... It is clear that instead of self-righteous blaming, polemical simplifications and paternalizing moralizations, the directors are concerned with something else and much more decisive: exposing the acute structures of injustice and the imminent danger they harbour."
Backlash in Mexico Prior to its release in Mexican cinemas, the film's trailer was received with an overwhelming negative response from the public and internet backlash as the scenes of the trailer was called by Mexican audiences on social media "Classist, racist and painfully stereotypical portraits of upper and lower classes in Mexico". The racism accusations towards the film in Mexico worsened as director Michel Franco claimed the film was a target of "profound
reverse racism" and felt himself as a victim of "hate crimes" as a
White Mexican, in reference to the term
Whitexican, used in the country to refer to racial inequalities in society. Franco would later post an apology on social media for his statements, claiming he was not aware of the impact of the terms he used towards the public's reception of the film trailer. José Antonio Aguilar, executive director of RacismoMX, a nationwide initiative in Mexico to address issues of racism in the country said: “The film's trailer repeats many racial stereotypes: brown people are poor, they’re savages, they’re resentful and want revenge.” After the release of the film, Erick Estrada from the website Cinegarage wrote: "[To] the ones who wish [to] revert [to] the establishment, [it is] a warning about the consequences of their acts than calling attention to how it was before the country's militarization." In Codigo Espaguetti, Nicolas Ruiz said the film is "[a criticism], with no empathy, from this cold distance that sees individuals as sheep and protesters as blood-thirsty zombies; it creates banal, shallow and Manichean representations". Arturo Magaña Arce in Cine Premiere reiterated the same view when he said the film "gives reason to those who judge people who, in a desperate way, [seek to] reclaim justice from the streets". ==See also==