My Comments on Crimson Gold (a little old now):

Crimson Gold starts off with a heist in play, and before that scene finishes, we are thrust into the back-story showing us what circumstances led to the event. The film deals with Hossein, a pizza delivery man who is slightly "off" as his superior once mentions, meaning that the guy is usually "lost in his own world." Nevertheless, Hossein notices the injustices taken place around him, but for the most part, he keeps to himself. Later on we learn that Hossein was in the army once and is still coping using medication. Hossein is soon joined by his brother-in-law to be as they commit petty crimes around the city.

It's good to see that Crimson Gold doesn't follow the 'one idea per film' routine that has now become the norm with Iranian Cinema, where viewers are forced to watch
repetitiveness in the name of "auteurism," signifying , well, that one particular idea. Crimson Gold is the fourth feature from Jafar Panahi that has been internationally
distributed. His debut feature, The White Balloon won the Camera d'Or winner at Cannes, while his last film, The Circle won the Golden Lion at Venice; the only other feature in between was The Mirror, and unlike others, it wasn't distributed worldwide. 

In Crimson Gold, Panahi has once again collaborated with the great Abbas Kiarostami for the screenplay and it's one of the better ones Ive seen this year. Having a pizza delivery man as a protagonist leaves Kiarostami plenty of time and ideas to work with as he goes from one place to another and the writer takes full advantage. "Money is meant to circulate," Hossein says once, and he does too, and this is where Kiarostami unleashes his at once subtle and forceful attack on the bourgeois, and in the big picture the society itself, which is as confused as the authorities above, and usually when that happens, it's the poor who become the target. 

The Circle still remains Panahi's most acclaimed film and arguably it is his best directorial effort so far as he deftly handled many character dealing with various situations, and the film's arc like structure emphasized their problems, but the subject matter (the plight of women in Iranian society) has been handled many times before that. Crimson Gold is a rarer 'thriller' if one can call that, and Panahi excels once again. His use of offscreen space in the opening sequence is harrowing as the camera remains focused on the door looking outside at the society while the crime is being committed. This is Panahi's best film in my opinion since The White Balloon, and even though his debut dealt with a dilemma of a child, Panahi used a busy street of Tehran for the setting and the film ended up being a lot tougher than one might have expected after watching the cringe-fests involving children from Majidi. It seems like in Crimson Gold, Panahi has taken his camera and circled half way, onto the other side of the street.