Metacritic reviews

The Broken Tower is a wonderful labour of passion and love for this incredible artist and his broken life and it could not have been a more perfect way to encapsulate the incredibly obscure and fantastic artist that is Hart Crane.

The Broken Tower feels unique as a young man’s tribute to an adventuresome, doomed soul.

Broken Tower feels stationary, repeating the same motifs and attitudes ad infinitum until the credits finally roll.

Despite the highly mobile and often arresting work of cinematographer Christina Voros, The Broken Tower is not a heady experience like many of the semi-experimental 1960s films he emulates. Instead, it's mostly a tedious chore, much akin to listening poetry you don't much like.

It’s tonally flat and a little too impressed with its own elliptical construction. Yet there’s something about Franco’s desire to escape the straitjacket of the biopic’s pat psychologizing and greatest-hits structure that makes his film feel at least honest in its missteps.

Though clearly besotted with Crane’s poetry, the writer-director-star never achieves full immersion in the man’s life or work; the sense is of people playing a very cerebral game of dress-up.

Despite earnest attempts, Mr. Franco can’t bring the fervency of Crane’s poetry to life in the extensive recitations.

Franco’s rather flat narration doesn’t do justice to Crane’s verse, but he is a charismatic onscreen presence.

The Broken Tower is sincere, amateurish, and misguided.

It plays like unwitting art-house self-parody from a narcissist who takes himself, and his brooding subject matter, way too seriously.