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100Lumumba revives the tradition of Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers" and Costa-Gavras' "Z" and "State of Siege." In substance and excitement, it joins their ranks.
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91What matters now, what Lumumba conveys, is the urgent chaos of revolution.
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90Genuine thriller -- with one crisis hurtling after another, heightened by hauntingly brief moments of peace.
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90Lumumba is potent stuff. Complex, powerful, intensely dramatic.
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90Mr. Peck's gambit works, and the result is a great film and a great performance.
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89As fluid and intellectually stimulating as the man himself, a tragic, heartfelt take on an event some 40 years old that feels as fresh as yesterday's Times.
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80There's nothing more incendiary than the reopening of a forgotten chapter of history --nothing more incendiary than telling the truth.
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80An impassioned, at times thrilling re-creation of the birth of the country that became Zaire and is now known as Congo again.
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80From the start, a comprehensible, if necessarily simplified, sense of an extremely complicated moment in history.
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75Although the narration is addressed to his wife, we learn little about her, his family or his personal life; he is used primarily as a guide through the milestones of the Congo's brief two-month experiment with democracy.
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75The film does succeed in making the story universal, giving us the drama as well as the history, the fire as well as cool examination. It's a movie that haunts you afterward.
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75The story is worth telling, one that begs the question: Has anything changed?
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75Gives a white-knuckled, you-are-there account of a politician's dilemma, one whose repercussions are still felt in Africa.
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75Betrayal is at the heart of this story, but also dreams of liberty and a life where all people are treated with respect.
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75Structural shortcomings and all -- gives a neglected giant of African independence his due.
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75Writer/director Raoul Peck never gives us enough intimate moments to let us feel we know the man on a personal level, and he doesn't have the narrative skill to economize the necessary exposition or steer a clear storyline.
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70Utterly enthralling even for viewers unfamiliar with the Congo's complicated political history.
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70As cliché-rich as it is compelling.
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67The film is masterful in many ways, and brilliantly acted by its lead player, Eriq Ebouaney, but it's often overly dense and fast with information, background and ideas.
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63Never much more than hagiography that lets the context of its hero's death remain confused.
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63The film feels like bare- bones docu-fiction, though, resisting the attendant drama until the bitter, grisly end.
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60The movie is visually stirring. And the locations, in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, imbue the story with eerie authenticity.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 11 out of 11
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Mixed: 0 out of 11
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Negative: 0 out of 11
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