Movie · 2020 · Drama, History · 2h 12m · R · English
Curator score: 4.5/10 (326.4K ratings)
Overview
1930s Hollywood is reevaluated through the eyes of scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane.
Ratings
Curator score: 4.5/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 3.30/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 83%
Metacritic: 79
TMDB: 6.7/10
Director
David Fincher
Production
Netflix International Pictures
Cast
Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Arliss Howard, Tom Pelphrey, Sam Troughton, Ferdinand Kingsley, Tuppence Middleton, Tom Burke, Joseph Cross, Jamie McShane, Toby Leonard Moore, Monika Gossmann, Charles Dance, Jack Romano, Adam Shapiro, John Churchill, Jeff Harms, Derek Petropolis, Sean Persaud
Where to watch
Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A sharp, ambitious, and often very funny Hollywood history lesson with immaculate craft, but its self-conscious style and talk-heavy structure can feel chilly or static. Best approached as a cinephile’s prestige drama about power, authorship, and studio politics rather than a propulsive crowd-pleaser.
Best for
David Fincher fans
classic Hollywood obsessives
viewers who enjoy screenwriting and industry politics
fans of stylized black-and-white period dramas
people interested in the making of American film myths
Skip if
you want a fast-moving or emotionally warm drama
you dislike dense dialogue and literary structure
you need strong narrative momentum
you’re not interested in old Hollywood lore or Citizen Kane-adjacent history
Overview
Mank is less a conventional biopic than a wry, meticulously designed argument about who gets to shape movie history. It treats 1930s Hollywood as a battleground of money, politics, vanity, and image-making, with Herman J. Mankiewicz cast as both participant and chronicler. The film’s black-and-white sheen and period textures are striking, but they also create a deliberate distance that some viewers will find intoxicating and others alienating.
Worth noting
The screenplay is packed with wit, bitterness, and side-eye, and the supporting performances give the movie much of its life. Amanda Seyfried in particular brings welcome spark to a film that can otherwise feel locked in a room with its own ideas. Still, the movie’s formal cleverness sometimes works against emotional immersion, making it feel more like a thesis with scenes than a drama that fully breathes.
Bottom line
As a portrait of Hollywood’s machinery and the myths it manufactures, it’s smart and frequently absorbing. As a piece of entertainment, it depends heavily on how much pleasure you take in craftsmanship, historical argument, and the pleasures of watching a director imitate an era while also critiquing it.
Top Letterboxd reviews
mia lee vicino · 5923 likes
i got shot at on my drive home from watching mank and mank was still the worst part of my night
Karsten (3★) · 3212 likes
This gets so much better as it goes. It starts on such an odd note where it reads like you walked into the theatre an hour late. I think it’s just so frantic in that first act and the more it really starts to settle and invites you into what it’s trying to do, you come around to it. There’s a lot of good in here, but for someone like Fincher—a master at making the audience care about anything he throws at them—I was bored way more than I should have been.
James (Schaffrillas) (4★) · 2828 likes
Why the fuck is no one talking about the fact that Bill Nye the Science Guy played Upton Sinclair in this movie
hunter strawberry (3★) · 1859 likes
basically this movie is Orson Welles trying to get Mankiewicz’s ownership share diluted down to .03%
Jim Cummings (5★) · 1748 likes
They let him make a love letter to his dad and I think that’s wonderful.