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80One of its great strengths lies in its surprising universality.
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75The acting and directing are uneven, but many scenes have strong emotional and political power.
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75Masterly coming-of-age drama.
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75In the psychologically scarred world of The Holy Land, sex and religion, love and hate, survival and despair all ricochet around, waiting to explode.
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70The film, like the beleaguered country it depicts, has a raw, neurotic, brawling yet tender vitality.
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70This broadly acted first feature is exceedingly direct, appropriately sordid, and at times, almost delicate.
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70A former yeshiva student himself, Gorlin turns this tale of political intrigue and the search for divinity into an act of liberation -- if not outright defiance.
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70Offers an occasionally fascinating look at the complex social, religious and political dynamics that help define the sacred city of Jerusalem.
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70The acting of the main cast is uniformly nuanced, and, except for some bad makeup on Mendy's father, the film never looks as low-budget as it must have been.
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70The story's resolution isn't very satisfying, but I considered most of this movie time well spent.
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63For all the film's flaws, it has a caustic, nondenominational view of apocalypses to come.
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60The film is really a timely critique of the ongoing insanity that has engulfed Israeli life.
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Gorlin's fiction, based loosely on his own life, must be better than that of "Frontline." And it's not.
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50Fails to capture the anguish and struggles of an ultra-Orthodox Jew adapting to a more secular world as did Amos Gitai's Kadosh, a film this one sometimes brings to mind.
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50Serious and absurd (mostly, it's a drama) but never finds a good rhythm. The movie flounders in a way that calls too much attention to itself -- and is hurt by jarring and unbelievable plot twists.
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50This film might've worked better as a comedy.
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50It has the awkwardness that characterizes many first features and, as befits a culture that does not always prize refinement, some of its performances and situations are not as subtle as they should be.
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50A barbed reflection on the great divide between secular and ultra-Orthodox Judaism in Israeli culture. But its digressive screenplay lacks focus and momentum and is too oblique to connect many of the dots between its characters and their behavior.
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40Although the narrative hiccups in The Holy Land can be chalked up to the mistakes of a beginning filmmaker, they are not disruptive enough to diminish the film’s realistic impact.
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30Small, amateurish Israeli feature.
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25The film's violent finale comes out of nowhere and will leave bewildered viewers wondering if they might have dozed off for a reel or two.