CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | Metacritic | MP3.com | TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games Books TV
Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

97 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
83 Alexandra
43 Anamorph
35 Babysitters, The
32 Backseat
80 Band's Visit, The
62 Battle for Haditha
47 Bella
63 Blind Mountain
71 Blindsight
47 Boarding Gate
63 Body of War
58 Bra Boys
70 Caramel
54 Cashback
44 Chaos Theory
32 Chapter 27
69 Chicago 10
82 Chop Shop
46 CJ7
78 Counterfeiters, The
30 Cover
48 Dark Matter
35 Deal
61 Dhamma Brothers, The
92 Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
73 Duchess of Langeais, The
20 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
58 Fall, The
43 Favor, The
58 First Saturday in May, The
57 Flawless
87 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
xx From Within
44 Frontier(s)
59 Fugitive Pieces
41 Funny Games
66 George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
61 Girls Rock!
55 Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
57 Grand, The
58 Hats Off
68 Honeydripper
xx Jack and Jill vs. the World
67 Jellyfish
xx Kiss the Bride
37 Life Before Her Eyes, The
72 Life of Reilly, The
50 Look
65 Married Life
35 Meet Bill
63 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
54 Mister Lonely
52 My Blueberry Nights
71 My Brother Is an Only Child
52 Noise
61 OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83 Paranoid Park
55 Pathology
48 Penelope
90 Persepolis
62 Planet B-Boy
xx Plumm Summer, A
67 Praying with Lior
46 Previous Engagement, A
72 Priceless
17 Prom Night
69 Redbelt
72 Roman de gare
48 Run, Fat Boy, Run
85 Savages, The
24 Sex and Death 101
66 Shelter
75 Shotgun Stories
40 Sleepwalking
67 Snow Angels
64 Son of Rambow
71 Standard Operating Procedure
76 Stuff and Dough
64 Surfwise
xx Tashan
82 Taxi to the Dark Side
57 Teeth
56 Then She Found Me
55 Tracey Fragments, The
56 Turn the River
72 Tuya's Marriage
83 U2 3D
59 Under the Same Moon
76 Unforeseen, The
xx Unsettled
91 Up the Yangtze
55 Vice
79 Visitor, The
64 Water Lilies
45 Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
57 Without the King
74 Witnesses, The
63 XXY
67 Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75 Young@Heart
45 Zombie Strippers

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Kandahar
Avatar Films

Kandahar reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 76 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.8 out of 10
based on 28 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 8 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Niloufar Pazira, Hassan Tantai, and Sadou Teymouri

Set in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, this is the story of Nafas (Pazira), a young female journalist who escaped the country to grow up in Canada and who returns incognito, smuggled in, to save her younger sister.


GENRE(S): Suspense/Thriller  
WRITTEN BY: Mohsen Makhmalbaf  
DIRECTED BY: Mohsen Makhmalbaf  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: May 13, 2003 
Video: May 13, 2003 
Theatrical: December 14, 2001 
RUNNING TIME: 85 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: France / Iran 
LANGUAGE(S): English / Farsi (with English subtitles) 

Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, 2001 Cannes Film Festival

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Presented without preachiness or affectation, Kandahar is a short, matter-of-fact visit to hell.
Read Full Review
100
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Makhmalbaf's astounding and haunting imagery tells a story of devastation, desperation and poverty.
Read Full Review
91
Portland Oregonian Staff (Not credited)
The director manages to maintain a steady streak of grim humor. Extreme repression can be bleakly funny in its idiocy, when viewed from a distance.
Read Full Review
90
Washington Post Desson Thomson
Though it might lack in Hollywood production values, it overflows with moral impact.
Read Full Review
90
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
You won't forget this film -- it's devastating.
Read Full Review
90
Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
This remarkably revealing and timely film, in which the depiction of pain and sorrow is suffused with a sense of beauty and a graceful, flowing style, more than lives up to glowing advance notices.
Read Full Review
89
Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman
The story is simple and true-to-life, and the technique is naturalistic, using nonprofessional actors, photography that emphasizes the characters' environment, and deliberate narrative pacing that mimics real-time events.
Read Full Review
88
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Kandahar does not provide deeply drawn characters, memorable dialogue or an exciting climax. Its traffic is in images.
Read Full Review
88
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Watching this film wakes you up; it is a window on an Iran and an Afghanistan we should have taken account of long ago -- seen though a master's eye, felt through a poet's touch.
Read Full Review
88
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Kandahar found itself in real-life controversy last December, when one of its actors was accused of murder.
Read Full Review
88
Boston Globe Loren King
A bleak road movie that often ambles. But its many moments of poetic grace make this haunting and harrowing journey a rewarding one.
Read Full Review
80
Film Threat Rich Cline
The result is stunning -- both as a narrative film and as a document of the place and time.
Read Full Review
80
The New Yorker David Denby
Abrupt and fragmentary, but powerful. [Dec 10 2001, p. 111]
80
Variety Deborah Young
A visually exalting, emotionally horrifying view of Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.
Read Full Review
80
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
That's the movie: It's taking us inside the burqa to the woman.
Read Full Review
75
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
While it's often harsh in style and melancholy in subject, Kandahar taps into veins of humor and compassion as well.
Read Full Review
75
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
What proves the validity of Kandahar is that, by the end, all these scenes are human ruins of the same nightmare world.
Read Full Review
75
Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Pazira, whose sapphire eyes blaze through the lattice of her slate-gray burqa, isn't much of an actress, as her singsong narration attests. But when not speaking, she has a commanding presence and is an effective witness to the ravages of war.
Read Full Review
75
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The world's newfound familiarity with the region's troubles only make Kandahar more compelling.
Read Full Review
70
Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
A stark and beautiful film traces a Afghan woman's journey across a landscape we may never understand.
Read Full Review
70
Village Voice J. Hoberman
The movie feels truncated, but it communicates a certain urgency and at times a powerful sense of the absurd.
Read Full Review
70
TV Guide Ken Fox
Makhmalbaf shot this film under extremely difficult circumstances, and it sometimes shows; but it's still an important achievement.
Read Full Review
67
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
With its lyrical vision of oppression, looks, if anything, milder now than it might have before the war.
Read Full Review
63
New York Post Jonathan Foreman
Unfortunately, you are often distractingly aware that you are watching re-enactments of real events.
Read Full Review
63
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Among the unforgettable images is that of artificial limbs floating to earth on parachutes, while below, one-legged men on crutches race each other to the prizes.
Read Full Review
60
New Times (L.A.) Luke Y. Thompson
A film worth your time, and if you know going into it that there's no closure, it'll give you all the more freedom to enjoy what IS there.
Read Full Review
60
Chicago Reader Staff (Not Credited)
The acting is mainly horrendous, the English dialogue frequently awkward, but they're overcome by the beautiful colors and settings and a grim sense of the uncanny spilling over into twisted humor.
Read Full Review
50
The New York Times A.O. Scott
Kandahar feels like a Magritte painting rendered in sand tones, and your eyes are drawn to the screen. There aren't enough of these moments, though, and Mr. Makhmalbaf lessens their power by repeating them.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

masoud b. gave it a9:
Good.

Ruby Q gave it a6:
An important look at an oppressive, war-ravaged nation, but my God the lead character (an Afghan-Canadian woman trying to find her sister) acts like a stupid Westerner blundering around clueless in a third world war zone. She takes off her burqua at every opportunity and even waves around a tape-recorder in a crowd of Afghan women. Pushed the boundaries of plausibility in order to set up explanations for viewers. High marks for being eye-opening but low for common sense.

Prateek G. gave it a9:
So much of how we view this movie comes from the prism of 9/11. The horrors of that day and the effects on international relations forces us to look beyond the acting and story. Some scenes are absolutely heartbreaking and have stayed with me. I am fascinated by the glimpses of the middle east provided by this and other movies.

Jessica G. gave it a 9:
Great movie, it's beautiful not for any professional acting but for being artistic and eye-opening.

Kris S. gave it a 10:
A beautiful movie in all its rawness.

Chad S. gave it a 9:
All those little girls at the onset of "Kandahar" being told they won't be needing an education in Afghanistan will break your heart, that is, if you're not filled with outrage. The burkas are beautiful to look at, and that, of course, is the grotesque irony and horror of this near-classic movie.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | BOOKS | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

About CNET Networks | Jobs | Advertise | Partnerships                                Visit other CNET Networks sites:

Copyright ©2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use