Down in the Valley

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

It's mysterious and bold at every turn, and refreshingly removed from the commonplace.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Down in the Valley is exactly what we don't have enough of: It's singular, unusual, unexpected, fresh and familiar at once.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

The movie belongs to Wood, who creates a unique portrait of a girl hesitating at the threshold of womanhood; she's smarter, more attuned, and more spiritually ambitious than those around her, but also too decent and loyal to break from the world she knows-and too unformed to have a grasp of what she wants outside of that world. It's fantastic work.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Down in the Valley is a wild thing that sticks with you long after it's over. You know, a real movie.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Driven by Edward Norton's and Evan Rachel Wood's riveting performances, writer-director David Jacobson's tense drama samples bits of cinematic Americana from sources as diverse as "Shane," "Badlands" and "Taxi Driver."

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Odd, beautiful and ambitious film.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Jacobson and his actors do so much with the characters that they leave an ambiguous residue of blood-streaked regrets and sadness.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

A psychotic we can't help falling for, Edward Norton's beautifully drawn and richly nuanced dreamer could, in time, prove to be one of the most memorable movie characters of recent years.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The best thing about Down in the Valley is that you hope it's not going where you have an inkling it's going. The purity of Norton's madness is a wonder.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Writer-director David Jacobson has a good eye for widescreen compositions and sustains a low-key note of dread but is less successful in his attempt to graft a neo-Western to a neo-noir.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

Jacobson, whose earlier film is a docudrama about Jeffrey Dahmer, is clearly fascinated with men who would be monsters. It's a ripe and infinite topic to explore, but without Norton, theme alone could not have sustained Down in the Valley.

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

Writer-director David Jacobson has an excitingly clear-eyed, unsentimental feel for the intensity of adolescent passion.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Begins semirealistically, then veers off course, hurtling into the wild blue yonder of myth and allegory. On the way to a climactic shootout that begins on the set of a Hollywood western and ends on a foggy hillside, it makes several screeching, hairpin turns.

Variety Scott Foundas

Result is imperfect and overlong, but hugely ambitious and often breathtaking.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

As it progresses, the film takes us to another borderland, that between reality and delusion. This is where Harlan's mind freely gallops.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Down in the Valley is one of those pictures you root for even when it goes badly wrong.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

When a movie begins to present one implausible or unwise decision after another, when its world plays too easily into the hands of its story, when the taste for symbolism creates impossible scenes, we grow restless.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The performances are deep and rich -- Wood is coming to seem like a smarter Chloe Sevigny, Rory looks to be the Culkin with talent, and Norton's portrayal of Harlan aches with ambiguity.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Down in the Valley becomes increasingly harder to believe as it goes along, with people behaving in ways that strain credibility.

Film Threat Felix Vasques Jr.

An original and utterly unconventional tragedy of fantasy and reality, and the potential lethal results of worlds colliding. Ed, glad to have you back.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

What keeps us watching? Chiefly it is Edward Norton's performance as Harlan. It is hard to doubt his belief in everything he says, no matter how silly or dangerous it sounds.

Los Angeles Times Mark Olsen

For a film that has allegedly undergone extensive tinkering following its premiere at last year's Cannes Film Festival, Down in the Valley abounds in nagging loose ends and suffers overall from logy pacing.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The film is thrown off balance by the weight of Norton's compassion for this troubled soul.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Both actors work hard to give this disturbing crime story some flavor and substance, but the narrative is overextended and poorly organized.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

In the end, it's really just a thriller, slower than most, with pockets of dead time but with a few extra flourishes, too, thanks to Norton.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

It feels mechanical, more conceptual than realized, like a senior project by a particularly ambitious student who's recently read "West of Everything" – and who's lucked into working with a world-class actor.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

As long as Norton plays Harlan as a modern-day Joe Buck, a kind of four-in-the-afternoon cowboy, we're drawn by his waltz of innocence and vagueness. But Down in the Valley turns out to be one of those films with a thick, gummy overlay of Western ''mythology.''

Village Voice Rob Nelson

Like "Don't Come Knocking," this contrived lament for the lonesome cowboy means to measure what remains of the old western in the absence of the Old West, eventually plopping its displaced ranch hand protagonist onto the fake Main Street of an old western movie set just to make sure we don't miss any of the cine-mythic connotations.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Edward Norton serves as lead actor and producer, but even his star power won't help this misfire reach a wide domestic audience.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Sucker-punches you. It appears to be an engagingly sweet romance, but it's really just about other movies.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The movie turns into something strange and annoying, an attempted blend of a suburban thriller with an Old West shoot-'em-up.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

While Jacobson navigates the first half of Down in the Valley deftly, he loses his way in the second.

Empire Ian Nathan

Never has the term 'American Independent' so obviously been code for 'wholly miserable experience'.