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88It's a thriller that feels like a documentary.
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88While The Forgiveness of Blood lacks the narrative momentum of director Joshua Marston's previous film, "Maria Full of Grace" - it is nonetheless fascinating.
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85It's the kind of movie that makes the world feel like a smaller place, suggesting that the similarities connecting us across continents and cultures are more resonant than the things that divide us.
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83The Forgiveness of Blood examines the barriers of ritual and the passage from youth to adulthood in Albanian society with the perceptive detail of a grand literary feat. At the same time, it retains the simplicity of a parable.
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83My favorite character is not Nik but his 15-year-old sister, Rudina (Sindi Lacej), who takes over her father's bread delivery route in his rickety wagon and makes a go of it against all odds. Her pluck seems both Old World and New World.
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83This gripping if tamped-down drama is steeped in ancient Albanian culture, where the real, tragic consequences of blood feuds can keep families trapped in their homes for generations.
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80Even if it lacks a stand-out turn it's still a grippingly authentic slice of life.
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80Quietly affecting and surprisingly dramatic, so long as you're willing to watch it unfold at its own deliberate pace.
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80There is so much to admire in Joshua Marston's The Forgiveness of Blood that it's easy to overlook the miracle at its center: Marston's artistic idealism.
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80Marston nails the claustrophobia of small-town life and the turbulent emotionalism of teenagers, but what pushes the film toward sublimity is the way he delicately captures all of the characters' inner lives as their world slowly crumbles.
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75What's lacking is a galvanizing performance comparable to that of the Oscar-nominated Catalina Sandino Moreno in "Maria Full of Grace." Still, The Forgiveness of Blood is a memorable portrait of a society and the demands it makes on those caught up in it.
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75There's much to observe – for example, the thoroughly credible performances of the cast, most of them non-professionals.
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75It never exactly lights you on fire, but you always believe it.
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75The nonprofessional cast is convincing, especially Lacej, whose Rudina registers more strongly than Nik.
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75Marston's a miniaturist even when The Forgiveness of Blood calls out for larger gestures, and you occasionally sense a more bruising, compelling movie lurking behind this one.
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75Richly photographed by Rob Hardy (who gave Red Riding: 1974 its almost surreal bleakness), this meticulously researched story (Marston spent a month interviewing families trapped in these vendettas) reveals a culture dominated by male pride and patriarchal selfishness.
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75A suspenseful work using nonprofessional actors and co-written with an Albanian filmmaker, shows Marston is no one-hit wonder.
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75The result is a film of great humanity that reveals Albania as a primitive region struggling to bridge the gap between medieval European customs and the tide of progress.
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70[A] compelling film touching on the perils of being young - that's it, merely young - in a culture without justice.
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67Just as Marston's scrupulous attention to local custom and devotion to social realism recall the work of John Sayles (Lone Star), his occasionally enervating style also recalls Sayles at his worst.
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63Watching the film, I felt impatience with these bullheaded men and the women who endure them. That's what Marston intended, I'm sure, but the stupidity of the characters doesn't provide much of an emotional payoff.
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60No matter how sincere, Marston's effort also suffers from the lack of a burning lead as he had in Maria's Catalina Sandino Moreno. Fierce acting is a virtue you don't have to travel the world to find - or to lose sight of.
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50Frustratingly, though, perhaps because he is an outsider and was concerned about appearing biased about another culture, about all that Mr. Marston does is chew on this clash, as if the repeated images of teenagers talking on cellphones next to a horse-drawn cart were a substitute for a strong filmmaking point of view.
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50The film wisely avoids giving its material a large-scale epic quality it can't sustain, but it also results in a project that lacks the complexity to register as more than a handsome little sketch.