Doubt

ReelViews James Berardinelli

An intellectually and emotionally exhausting and engrossing experience. It is drama of the highest caliber.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Doubt has exact and merciless writing, powerful performances and timeless relevance. It causes us to start thinking with the first shot, and we never stop. Think how rare that is in a film.

Chicago Reader Albert Williams

Streep and Hoffman are pitch-perfect, and Amy Adams is also superb as a young nun caught up in the conflict.

TV Guide Perry Seibert

Satisfies the heart and engages the mind.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Doubt is still overpowering; it took me a while when it was over to stop shaking. It's the dramatist’s business to sow doubt, to set down points of view that can't be reconciled, and Shanley makes visceral the notion that one can be right but never absolutely right, that doubt might be our last, best hope.

Film Threat Matthew Sorrento

Exhausting yet invigorating, it's a drama one witnesses more than just views.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

While Streep has a tiny bit too much fun with some of her character's excesses, she's awfully good. So is Hoffman, who walks a fine line between obvious guilt and possible innocence.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

You may have doubts about which side to choose, but there's no doubt about this mind-bender. It'll pin you to your seat.

USA Today Claudia Puig

By eloquently probing the state of uncertainty and its accompanying discomfort and confusion, Doubt compels viewers to examine their own assumptions as they become caught up in this fascinating tale.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Doubt is a complex, thematically loaded piece of work, and though it isn't enhanced on film, it deserves the wider exposure.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's a splendid ensemble, equal in almost every way to the fine, probing script.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The film's added enigma makes the play's title even more appropriate, but it results in a more ambiguous and perhaps less satisfying dramatic experience.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Along with its disappointments and its narrowness of intellectual focus, Doubt offers up the crackling pleasures of performance and a narrative that snaps shut like a mousetrap. It's the movie equivalent of a rousing night at the theater.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Doubt leaves none in one respect: John Patrick Shanley was the right person to direct this fascinating screen version of his celebrated play.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

This movie sticks.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

There seems to be something about the story itself that's better suited to the stage than the screen.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A feast of great acting, although in the final analysis it's a filmed stage play rather than a brilliant movie.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Not exactly a tour de force, but the film succeeds on the wattage of its stars.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The truth is left for the audience to decide. And while the conclusion isn't necessarily clear, it is unsettling.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Blessedly, the kernel of the writing remains undisturbed, and its arguments are still powerful.

Slate Dana Stevens

Cinematically, Doubt is something of a dud. But if it remains a play, it's an ingeniously structured one, with smart, thought-provoking words spoken by fabulous actors, and how often do most of us get to see one of those, whether in three dimensions or two?

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Directing the film of Doubt, Shanley is able to put an even finer point on his Tony-and Pulitzer-winning play about suspicion and guilt at a Bronx Catholic grade school in 1964.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The film is nothing if not provocative.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Just when you begin to think you know who the cat and mouse really are, in steps Viola Davis to steal not just her scene but the entire movie from Streep.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Shanley seems to have lost a certain amount of faith in what he'd written. As a director he's ended up pushing the drama harder than he needs to. He hasn't done anything fatal, but he has tampered with and hampered it.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

As a consideration of faith and propriety, the movie never managed to boil my blood or break my heart.

Empire Damon Wise

A mighty actor, a smart play, a clunky adaptation.

NPR Bob Mondello

Doubt cast a long moral shadow on Broadway but seems blunter on screen, largely because Shanley's fussy directorial notions ... are less nuanced than the religious and moral arguments he's given his principal characters.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Shanley turns out to have dismayingly few original cinematic notions to back up the basic did-he-or-didn't-he hook in his study of conviction and compassion.

Newsweek David Ansen

Doubt stirs up a lot of stormy theatrical weather, but the stolid transfer from stage to screen does Shanley's play no favors.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

Doubt is only marginally, and tendentiously, about moral uncertainty--it's more about the sins of a nosy old biddy who pulls out all the stops when going through the official channels of a male-dominated Catholic Church would get her nowhere.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Mainstream moviemaking, with its commercial directives and slavish attachment to narrative codes isn't particularly hospitable to ambiguity...which may help explain why Mr. Shanley's film feels caught between two mediums and why Ms. Streep appears to be in a Gothic horror thriller while everyone else looks and sounds closer to life or at least dramatic realism.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The problem with Doubt is its dramatic certainty.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Unfortunately, the actors don't all behave as though they're performing in the same movie.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Shanley offers no resolution to this Sharks vs. Jets conflict. For that, we have to wait for "Doubt! The Musical."

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Streep can do anything. She is, of course, wasted on this elephantine fable; if only Doubt had been made in 1964, shot by Roger Corman over a long weekend, and retitled "Spawn of the Devil Witch" or "Blood Wimple," all would have been forgiven