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The Greatest
Metascore
45 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 17 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 17
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 17
  3. Negative: 1 out of 17
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  1. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    75
    The Greatest raises compelling questions about how parents continue on after the death of a child.
  2. New York Observer
    Reviewed by: Rex Reed
    75
    A film of maturity and courage, one that kept me consistently engaged. Quite an accomplishment, really, for a new filmmaker on her first date with a camera.
  3. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    63
    Brosnan, on a roll with this film and "The Ghost Writer," vividly etches the emotional fissures in a man coming apart. The Greatest takes a piece out of you.
  4. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Chuck Wilson
    60
    First-time writer-director Shana Feste has made an uneven but often affecting film that requires its gifted cast to push hard against the script's schematic plotting to find moments of real emotion.
  5. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    50
    So the screenplay is a soap operatic mess, involving distractions, loose ends, and sheer carelessness.
  6. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    50
    Brosnan, who finds the truth in his character, is quite affecting. And Mulligan, gamely defining a surprisingly undefined young woman, is like a sunbeam piercing the gloom.
  7. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    50
    Brosnan has never been so opened up, so emotional and yet so precise in his work. It's a lovely performance in a film that only sometimes deserves him.
  8. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    50
    The filmmaker's uncertainty shows itself in drably functional camerawork and an over-reliance on Christophe Beck's tasteful piano-and-violin score.
  9. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    50
    What a waste of a talented cast! There are times when it can be depressing to see so much acting potential wasted on a script unable to elicit the best from its stars, and this is one such occasion.
  10. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    50
    A histrionic mess.
  11. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Gary Goldstein
    50
    Unfortunately, though its heart is smack in the right place, The Greatest tends to play more like a collection of appropriate, well-acted scenes than as a fully satisfying narrative.
  12. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    50
    It's when the small moments become large ones that Feste overreaches and the shaky performances don't bail her out.
  13. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    42
    Not a sterling example of how to make a high-toned weepie, let alone a serious examination of trauma.
  14. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Joe Neumaier
    40
    Dignity dies a million deaths despite the best intentions.
  15. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: David Fear
    40
    Given that Sarandon played this same role so sublimely before in "Moonlight Mile," her devolution into theatrical rending of garments and gnashing of teeth is particularly disappointing, but no one--not Brosnan's shell-shocked–by-numbers patriarch nor Mulligan's wide-eyed waif--comes out of this steroidal pity party unscathed.
  16. Time
    Reviewed by: Mary Pols
    40
    The Greatest often feels like a mash-up of Sarandon's greatest grief hits.
  17. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    30
    Not even the skillful performances of its stars, Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan, playing the boy's parents, can cover up the mysterious gaps in continuity of a screenplay whose thudding dialogue spells out every emotion while refusing to clarify many crucial plot details.
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