Film

The Dinner

Name: The Dinner
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Mystery
Released: 2017
Cast: Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Hall, Chloë Sevigny

A chamber piece about moral collapse disguised as fine dining. Two brothers and their wives navigate a restaurant conversation that becomes a proxy war over complicity, parental instinct, and whether blood absolves you of anything. It's tense, deliberately paced, and interested in how good people rationalize terrible choices.

TMDb rating

2.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy talky, card-sharp drama where the tension lives in what people say across a table and what they keep from each other, with a cast that makes every glance land.

Skip it if you want plot momentum or moral clarity, since it stays in one restaurant and its brittle politeness can feel like an airless stage play.

What it asks of you: Two hours of sustained, mostly seated dialogue with long pauses, sharpening slowly; it is dark in subject, so expect to stay alert rather than be entertained.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Mystic River2003

Three childhood friends confront a murder that forces each to reckon with who they've become. Like The Dinner, it's about men wrestling with responsibility, loyalty, and the gap between their public selves and private knowledge.

But Long, heavy, and bleak—there's no catharsis waiting. Some viewers find the moral weight exhausting rather than clarifying.

Carnage2011

Two couples meet to discuss an incident involving their sons. Polanski watches civilization peel away in real time as drinks flow and social pretense cracks. The claustrophobia and escalating absurdity mirror The Dinner's pressure cooker perfectly.

But It's a play adapted for screen, so it feels staged and theatrical. The rhythms are mannered in ways that can feel precious.

The Squid and the Whale2005

A family imploding from the inside, told with uncomfortable specificity about how parents damage children while convincing themselves they're doing right. Noah Baumbach captures the same self-deception that drives The Dinner's characters.

But Painfully awkward and often unlikeable. It's indie in texture, which means it lacks the propulsive tension some viewers want from drama.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Dinner

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Trap2015

Both are chamber pieces where a single gathering becomes a crucible for unspoken resentment. Both suggest that civility is a mask we agree to wear until we don't.

Rikki Beadle-Blair's three-part series about a dinner party where secrets and resentment detonate across one evening. It shares The Dinner's pressure-cooker structure but with a British sensibility that finds pitch-black comedy in moral compromise.

But Shot on a tight budget with TV-level production values. The dramaturgy is theatrical in ways that can feel stagy to film audiences.

August: Osage County2013

A family gathers and verbal warfare erupts as old grievances become weapons. Like The Dinner, it's about how families can turn a single conversation into a referendum on everyone's entire history and worth.

But Meryl Streep's performance dominates, and the film leans theatrically loud. Some find it more soap opera than psychology.

Doubt2008

Certainty corrodes when two people meet to discuss an accusation neither can fully prove. Shanley builds dread from ambiguity and competing moral claims—exactly what The Dinner does with parental complicity and justice.

But Deliberately static and dialogue-heavy. If you want plot momentum, this will frustrate you.

Spotlight2015

Methodical investigation into institutional cover-up and the people who enable it by staying quiet. The moral architecture echoes The Dinner's central question: what do you owe society versus your own?

But Procedural and restrained. It rewards attention but won't excite you viscerally.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead2007

Two brothers' plan spirals into recrimination and revelation. Lumet shows how quickly brothers can become strangers, and how one decision shatters the myth of family protection.

But It's structured in reverse and can feel narratively confusing. The violence is sudden and brutal in ways that jar some viewers.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead poster

The Killing of a Sacred Deer2017

A surgeon and his family face a debt they can't escape. Yorgos Lanthimos uses meter and ritual to build unbearable moral pressure—the same suffocation that The Dinner achieves through dialogue.

But Detached and deadpan to the point of coldness. Some experience it as pretentious rather than profound.

Son of Saul2015

Both ask whether love for your own absolves you from knowledge of mass suffering. The Dinner's characters grapple with this abstractly; Son of Saul lives it in extremis.

A man in a concentration camp tries to give one boy a proper burial while participating in an atrocity. It's a film about complicity without escape, about how good intentions mean nothing when the system is irredeemable. Gorgeously, unbearably humanistic.

But It's a Holocaust film with an extremely narrow perspective and static camera. It's difficult and specific in ways designed to challenge rather than console.

I Am Wrath2016

The inverse of The Dinner: where that film is all talk and moral paralysis, this is all action and primal feeling. Both center on fathers forced to choose between law and protection of their children.

John Travolta as a man whose son is murdered and the system fails him. Instead of dining-room philosophy, he pursues brutal revenge. It's what The Dinner's characters don't have the courage to become—pure action driven by paternal rage.

But B-movie action film with weak dialogue and predictable plotting. It's schlocky in ways that undercut emotional weight.