Sea Inside, The

Variety Jonathan Holland

A dramatic triumph.

Premiere Kevin Allison

In the way that water can heal and harm, this film balances moments of dreamy spirituality with the salty harshness of family disputes.

USA Today Claudia Puig

A monumentally moving experience, from the powerful acting by Javier Bardem to the evocative music, composed by the director, Alejandro Amenábar.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Based on a true story, the movie has abundant humor and uplift - but it's a heartbreaker of extraordinary dimension.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The Sea Inside brings us outside and inside ourselves, and takes us to brave new aesthetic depths.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

What makes The Sea Inside such a riveting drama is that none of these relationships is sufficient to make Ramón want to go on living.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

The result is a film both poetic and profound.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Bardem's performance is a marvel of restraint and control, both physical and emotional.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The Sea Inside is uplifting. This is a movie that may cause viewers to both laugh and cry.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The film is a melancholy but poetic meditation on the fragility of the gift of life.

Dallas Observer Melissa Levine

A flawed film worth seeing.

Empire Kim Newman

The more intimate scenes are almost unbearably poignant.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Rare is the motion picture which grapples with issues this provocative and profound. Rarer still is one which does so this well.

Slate David Edelstein

As for Bardem: How can I do him justice? He is normally the most robustly physical of actors, with a plummy voice and an insolent sensuality. To see him immobile, ashen, his hair gone, de-bodyized: It's agonizing.

New York Magazine Ken Tucker

Operates as stealth art: stately, moving, beautifully acted, and urgently subversive to our own status quo.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Has its share of contrivances, some more successful than others, but center stage is occupied by truth, and austere beauty.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

A film about freedom as well as death, this won't suit every taste, but it rewards close attention and has moments of saving humor.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Bardem is brilliant.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Wrings honest emotion and riveting dramatics from its tale.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The classy production, with its aesthetic graces, is especially convincing about the charisma of the man, a performance specialty of the great Bardem.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The film, quite rightly, is a tour de force for Bardem.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Leah McLaren

This movie might make you cry, but it is not explicitly designed to do so.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

It's moving, romantic, dreamlike, flawlessly acted and so engaging as to make you forget about euthanasia before it jolts you back into recognition.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This is simply the story of one man. Yes, and on those terms I accept it, and was moved by the humanity and logic of the character.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

For the most part, the film stays steady-on, celebrating one man's crusade - and one family's heartbreak.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Fortunately, Bardem, who earned an Oscar nomination for his role in Julian Schnabel's "Before Night Falls," makes up for the script's shortcomings.

TV Guide Ethan Alter

The result isn't an easy film, but it is rewarding.

Newsweek David Ansen

It's a testament to his (Amenabar's) cinematic flair that he has taken as daunting a subject as euthanasia and turned it into a crowd-pleasing movie. It's also an indication of what feels wrong here. I can't deny that I was moved, but it all goes down a bit TOO easy.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

There's a combination of fatalism and hard-edged humor at work in The Sea Inside that you can imagine Irish writers would feel right at home with.

Village Voice Laura Sinagra

Unfortunately, Bardem is confined by more than Ramón's paralysis. He also must work within the limits of a partially numbed script.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

If the movie is largely familiar, its passion and craft are noteworthy.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

Understandably, a filmmaker tackling the retelling of a national hero must do so with great delicacy, but The Sea Inside presents not so much a hero as a saint in Sampredo.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Bardem gives such a brilliant performance in The Sea Inside, it's a crime that the film itself drowns in tears.

Washington Post Nelson Pressley

Placid and rather attractive on the surface, with depths you can sense but which are never fully plumbed.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

You want the movie to stir your soul, push your intellect, or at the very least, break your heart. But it's such a repetitive and thinly constructed piece of filmmaking that the scope and complexity of Sampedro's case are turned to porridge.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

The film fails to convey the claustrophobic terror experienced by a man who called his book "Letters From Hell."

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

When pinned mostly in the man's bedroom, Amenábar's flashier instincts are stifled by a bolted camera and a procession of issue-of-the-week clichés.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

I remained strangely dry-eyed up to the final shot.