Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

58 (Untitled)
96 35 Shots of Rum
56 Adam
39 Adventures of Power
66 Afterschool
73 Amreeka
49 Antichrist
76 Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86 Beaches of Agnes, The
71 Big Fan
65 Black Dynamite
76 Bliss
26 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81 Bright Star
76 Broken Embraces
70 Bronson
62 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
69 Cold Souls
60 Collapse
82 Cove, The
75 Crude
82 Damned United, The
53 Dare
50 Defamation
67 Departures
70 Earth Days
85 Education, An
55 Endgame
88 Fantastic Mr. Fox
31 Fix
49 Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80 Food, Inc.
xx From Mexico with Love
28 Gentlemen Broncos
72 Good Hair
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Horse Boy, The
74 House of the Devil, The
xx How to Seduce Difficult Women
26 I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70 It Might Get Loud
46 Killing Kasztner
43 Little Traitor, The
34 Looking for Palladin
80 Lorna's Silence
46 Love Hurts
84 Maid, The
45 Mammoth
75 Messenger, The
55 Missing Person, The
59 More Than a Game
34 Motherhood
62 My One and Only
48 New York, I Love You
66 No Impact Man
26 Oh My God
68 Paranormal Activity
68 Paris
79 Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73 Red Cliff
69 September Issue, The
79 Serious Man, A
65 Skin
41 Splinterheads
42 Staten Island
50 Stoning of Soraya M., The
58 Storm
82 Sun, The
49 Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73 That Evening Sun
61 Trucker
49 Turning Green
83 U2 3D
45 Uncertainty
67 Visual Acoustics
32 War on Kids
67 Way We Get By, The
65 Wedding Song, The
xx White on Rice
59 William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74 Woman in Berlin, A
43 Women in Trouble
69 Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Road Home, The

EMAILPRINTSony Pictures Classics

Road Home, The reviews
71
8.3 User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 25 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 18 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama

Written by: Shi Bao (also novel Remembrance)

Directed by: Yimou Zhang

Release Date:
Theatrical: May 25, 2001
DVD: November 27, 2001

Running Time: 89 minutes, Color / BW

Origin: China

Language(s): Mandarin with English subtitles

Summary

RATING: G for General Audiences

Starring Ziyi Zhang, Honglei Sun, Hao Zheng, Yuelin Zhao, Bin Li, Guifa Chang, and Wencheng Sung

The story of a Chinese man who works in the city, far from the village where he was born. When his father dies he comes home for the funeral and spends three days with his mother, thinking back to the period in which his parents met and fell in love. (Sony Pictures Classics)

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

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A great love story and a deeply moving celebration of simple lives.

91

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Shines with the kind of honesty that's very scarce in today's ultra-manipulative cinema.

Read Full Review >
90

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A gorgeous film with a vision strong enough to sustain heart-tugging, heightened by San Bao's romantic score, that verges on the sentimental.

Read Full Review >
90

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The result is an enchanting story of love from an idealized past that endures in the mundane present.

90

Washington Post Desson Thomson

A beautifully textured, disarmingly simple movie about romantic devotion.

Read Full Review >
88

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

It's the rare film that trusts both its audience's intelligence and its emotions.

88

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan

The Road Home takes a path few movies choose to travel these days, but it's a very affecting journey.

83

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

This is a gentle, engaging narrative of constancy and devotion against all odds, both natural and bureaucratic, in which the past represents enduring family values and customs.

Read Full Review >
80

The New York Times Stephen Holden

A cinematic ballad of such seamless construction and exquisite tonal balance it transcends most of the pitfalls of movies that aspire to a classic, lyric simplicity.

Read Full Review >
80

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The director finds poetry in the face of his lead actress, whose performance is as luminous and moving as the film itself.

Read Full Review >
80

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

The flutes soar a little too often, but Yimou's film is genuinely moving.

78

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

Abundant arthouse crowd appeal.

Read Full Review >
75

USA Today Mike Clark

It's a sweet tale, but the movie's real subject is Zhang, the camera's muse that the lens adores.

Read Full Review >
75

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

It's a simple story, reminiscent of the Iranian film "The Wind Will Carry Us."

Read Full Review >
75

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

With so many cynical Hollywood romances cluttering theaters, Zhang Yimou's unabashed simplicity is most welcome.

Read Full Review >
75

Boston Globe Jay Carr

As luminous as the star presence at its center. It's at once a touching teacher movie and an even more touching love story.

75

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The lyrical The Road Home is less political and less flashy than some previous films by Zhang Yimou.

Read Full Review >
75

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Has a graceful simplicity that many will find hard to resist.

Read Full Review >
70

TV Guide Ken Fox

The result is an interesting, if slightly unbalanced, hybrid: a social problem film with the warm heart of a deeply felt love story.

Read Full Review >
70

Variety Derek Elley

Takes the simplest of stories and weaves a seductive, extremely moving portrait of a young woman’s unshakable love.

Read Full Review >
60

Washington Post Rita Kempley

A nostalgic paean to China's fading pastoral ways, might easily be taken for an audition tape for Zhang Ziyi.

Read Full Review >
50

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Predictable, not so much from his (Zhang Yimou) previous movies as from the work of the many sentimentalists who have already plowed this well-tilled turf.

Read Full Review >
40

New Times (L.A.) Andy Klein

Sad to say, the story is simply too slight to sustain the film.

Read Full Review >
40

Village Voice Jessica Winter

The Road Home is foremost enthralled, however, with its lead actress -- wide-eyed and pigtailed, revered in close-up after stunned close-up.

Read Full Review >
30

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

By all current standards it's a startlingly ingenuous film.

Read Full Review >

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 18 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Dan B. gave it a 3:
I remember being excited to see the new Zhang Yimou movie back when it was released. And then I saw it. And ever since, I have not been so excited about his movies. Pity.

Chad S. gave it a 5:
"The Road Home" is a movie about how cute Zhang Ziyi looks when she's in love. It's clear to us that the other Zhang is in love with his subject, because he alone may find Di's (Ziyi) compendium of long distance ogling at her village's new schoolteacher, a sequence that's made for compelling viewing. Yes, we note how her pigtails slap against her cheeks when she's excited. Yes, Di is adorable...and illiterate. "The Road Home" seems nostalgic for a time when women weren't allowed to be educated. The narrator, the deceased man's son, tells us that his mother never grew tired of eavesdropping on her husband's schoolhouse sessions for the last forty years. This woman's life on the periphery is treated with fond nostalgia. It's the audience's job to supply the horror.

Yoon C. gave it a 5:
Zhang Ziyi as an infatuated doe-eyed girl is annoying to the max, what with Zhimou's inappropriate use of slow-motion and lyrical visual waxing over peasant girl antics. It's interesting, even potentially comedic, that in a remote village a schoolteacher from the city can seem like a rock star, but the movie is so earnest and well-meaning that the only words that came to mind was Mao's "To rebel is justified". I'd like to toss this movie out the window. Zhimou, sometimes a fine director, has no business giving us a lecture on virtue. Yech.

David B. gave it a 10:
This movie is too good to be true!

Edmond B. gave it a 10:
This movie is definetly the best asian movie i've seen.

Harvey C. gave it a 10:
Most touching movie I've seen in a long time.

David C. gave it a 10:
This movie exemplifies the true essence of love and embodies the real reason for making movies. Honor, integrity, courage, and Love.

Read more user comments >

Popular on CBS sites: SEC Football | NFL | Video Game Cheats | iPhone | Video Game Reviews | Notebooks | Antivirus Software

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy (UPDATED) | Terms of Use