- Critic Score
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100Beach and Adams give remarkable performances that grow in feeling and intensity.
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100Beautiful in both its brevity and its vision of contemporary Indian culture, the film abounds in easygoing humor.
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90The deeper strength of Smoke Signals rests on the sensitivity and truthfulness of Farmer’s performance as the ebullient, self-hating alcoholic father, and that of Irene Bedard as the young woman he knew in later life.
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What's truly remarkable about Smoke Signals is the depth of the narrative, a touching tale of self-discovery.
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90And that's the surprise of the movie, beyond even the humor and humanity of its inside look at contemporary American Indian culture. It's really the oldest and most primal story forms, the one about the old man and the boy.
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83The film excels in small scenes of cannily chosen Indian everydayness.
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80Its particularities are the best thing about it.
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78The cast is uniformly excellent in their roles, and Eyre's persistent use of long, trailing shots reinforces the story's elegiac tone.
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75Takes advantage of the road movie genre, which requires only a goal and then permits great freedom in the events along the way.
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75Offers the prospect of seeing beyond the stereotypes that plague Native Americans in even the best films.
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70Shows colorful style and a wisdom beyond precocity about its setting and its people.
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70A shrewd portrait, sly, casual yet palpably authentic, of the principal ways members of any minority try to respond to an uncomprehending world. [29 Jun 1998, p. 69]
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70Breezy, often self-mocking tone proves fresh and invigorating.
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The film is bound together around the oral tradition and the act of storytelling, and this is where the filmmakers shine.
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60A well-crafted story with a unique voice. But its literary gifts are outweighed by its pictorial prosaicness. Dimming the screen in every shot is the unmistakable shadow of the page.
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50The movie makes up in sincerity and goodwill what it lacks in originality and style.
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40Alexie, who adapted his own novel, bears responsibility for the movie's ham-fisted treatment of racial-identity issues, its tiresome jokes and the dated, throbbing-guitar soundtrack.
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