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100Sarandon delivers one of her very best performances; her shock at encountering the wrath of the victim's family is registered beautifully. And Sean Penn, who for too long has suffered with the label of being a "bad boy," gives an Oscar-caliber performance.[12 January 1996, Friday, p.B]
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100It's ironic that a film with this title should be among the most vital, alive, and challenging cinema experiences of the year.
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100This film ennobles filmmaking.
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100Acting rarely gets better than this.
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100Happily, there's nothing to misconstrue about the film: It's fabulous.
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100A bold, searching, wrenching experience. It may be the most complexly impassioned message movie Hollywood has ever made.
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90Possesses that rarest of qualities: moral humility.
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Dead Man Walking drops a massive, writhing knot of sorrow in your lap and then doesn't tell you what to do with it. If that doesn't sound like entertainment to you, you're right. It does something far more profound: It finds the tragic universal core of a contentious issue.
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90Sean Penn gives the most riveting, selfless performance of his career.
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90A complex, myriad-faceted work of art.
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90Their (Sarandon, Penn) performances and Robbins' drive to ask questions without offering easy answers make Dead Man Walking a thought-provoking drama not to be missed or dismissed.
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90Quietly courageous drama .
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90It is a measure of its complexity--and of the forces Penn and Sarandon have held in reserve during their hypnotic struggle for his soul--that its final moments leave us awash in emotion.
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90An intimate chamber piece for two, superbly acted by Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, this is a mature, well-crafted movie.
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90An extremely affecting experience, down to the last agonizing moment.
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What this intelligent, balanced, devastating movie puts before us is nothing less than a contest between good and evil.
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Robbins' direction and script are nearly flawlessly rich. There are no easy answers on death row, and Dead Man Walking makes this painfully, powerfully clear.
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80This isn't a crowd-pleaser in terms of subject matter -- you've got a convict and a nun, with no love scenes -- but Robbins keeps it interesting.
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80Unusual in both its subject matter and its approach, this film guides us on a pair of intertwined paths American movies rarely venture down.
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80No simple diatribe against capital punishment, it's a strong film, made stronger by two terrific performances.
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75The movie is often preachy and self-conscious, especially in long dialogue scenes, where Robbins's inexpert scriptwriting makes people talk at instead of with each other. Yet the picture's solid assets enable it to soar above such problems, both intellectually and emotionally. [29 December 1995, Film, p.13]
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63Troubling and troubled.
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50Sarandon is terrific and Penn is in top form, but the film is an achingly earnest message movie with a curiously muddled message.
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50Has its awkward and square moments directorially, but it's also uncommonly honest and serious.
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30Overpraised, intellectually soft, narratively unfocused, and thematically ambivalent.
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30The picture is cloudy in intent. That cloudiness is deepened by Susan Sarandon's performance as Sister Helen. If she were giving the role what it seems to demand, a glow of true religious light, the film would have some organic cohesion, a strong spiritual cord running through it. But Sarandon does little more than present her face. [Feb. 5, 1996]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 15
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Mixed: 1 out of 15
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Negative: 2 out of 15
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Lissa10This made me change my views on the Death Penalty. Amazing film.