Metacritic reviews

Paul is not a sociopath like Tom Ripley, and the movie does not convey the same diabolical Hitchcockian sense of being manipulated by a slightly sadistic master puppeteer. As the story sprawls across the screen, it darts from one incident to the next as though it were inventing itself as it goes along.

Much of the plot stretches credulity, but the way it's constructed keeps tension high.

For most of the way, right up until a hastily contrived and deeply unsatisfying ending, the film perceptively sketches a fractured identity, a man who enters a new life carrying painful remnants of the old.

For most of the film, Lartigau creates the tension of a Hitchcockian thriller solely through Paul's interior struggle.

The Big Picture has been compared to "The Talented Mr. Ripley," the twice-filmed Patricia Highsmith novel about a sociopath who kills and then impersonates a rich acquaintance. But in spirit it's closer to Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 "The Passenger," with Jack Nicholson as an existential adventurer who poses as a dead stranger.

A few plot holes hold back what is otherwise a well cast and compelling picture.

The direction from Eric Lartigau keeps things moving along fast and furious: preposterous it may be, the movie is carried off with some style.

The Big Picture is really Duris's picture; the actor toggles effortlessly between arrogant, feral, remorseful and ruthless as the plot throws one curveball after the next.

Built around a multilayered performance from Duris, it's a film unafraid to pose more questions than it answers.

Like its protagonist, the film sells out for the security of convention and complacency.