The Revisionist Keeps Revising
Dustin Hoffman gives a sharp, vulnerable performance, but a restless structure and a hazy reality keep the film from the version of itself that works best.
By MIGUEL MATEO | JUNE 8, 2026
Dustin Hoffman has spent decades perfecting the role of the prickly older man, and in The Revisionist he slips into that curmudgeon mode again, but this is the persona in peak form. As David, Hoffman is sharp and abrasive on the surface, yet the performance keeps cracking open. In a handful of quiet moments you catch the vulnerability and the reluctant emotional openness that defined his very best work, the same current that ran through Kramer vs. Kramer and Tootsie. It's a reminder that even when he's playing a difficult man, Hoffman knows exactly how to let the audience see what that difficulty is protecting.
The film builds itself around a central three: John, Jacob, and Elise. Andre Holland plays John with an easy confidence that anchors much of the picture, and Alison Brie is terrific as Elise, bringing a restless intelligence to a character who is constantly reshaping the world around her. Tom Sturridge is effective as Jacob, David's son, a man carrying a slow-burning resentment toward his father. The wound is specific and well played: David has always been closer to John, and frankly to nearly everyone, than to his own son, and Sturridge lets that quiet grievance simmer rather than boil.
That father-son dynamic is, for me, the most compelling thread in the movie, which is exactly why the film's choices become frustrating. One can't help wondering what The Revisionist might have been had it centered its narrative on David rather than splitting focus across the trio. Hoffman is doing the most interesting work on screen, and the emotional stakes between him and Jacob feel like the story's true heart. Diffusing that across three leads gives the ensemble room to shine, but it also keeps pulling away from the relationship that lands hardest.
The film's most ambitious gamble is its blurring of reality and Elise's imagination. As a writer trying to inject more intrigue and sauciness into her work, she reshapes events, and the movie folds those inventions into the actual narrative. It's a genuinely interesting premise, but the execution leaves so much haze around the seams that I kept second-guessing myself about which scenes were real and which were Elise's embellishments. Rather than deepening the story, the ambiguity often distanced me from it.
What lingers afterward is a sense of missed opportunity. The characters are rich, the cast is uniformly strong, and the premise has real promise, enough that I found myself wishing the film had simply told its story in a more conventional, confident way and trusted that material to carry the weight. The Revisionist has the pieces of something memorable. It just keeps revising away from the version of itself that works best.
Rating: ★★★ out of ★★★★★
Currently playing at Tribeca Film Festival