The French film [An Ordinary Case] doesn’t have as much drama in the witness box as I would like, but it makes up for that outside the courtroom.

...[Daniel Auteuil] can do anything. He proves it conclusively with The Thread.

Perhaps Auteuil needed to give it more energy on both sides of the camera, yet there is a charge in its deferred revelation.

The film owes a huge debt to the performances of Auteuil and Gadebois who draw us into a story that might have felt mechanical with lesser talents.