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63The Lady is more professional but, for me, "They Call It Myanmar" is more useful. Lieberman answers questions that Besson does not think to ask.
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75The Lady is a portrait in moral and physical courage, a sort of analysis of what constitutes greatness.
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40Any story about Suu Kyi's extraordinary life is worth seeing, simply to learn more about her. Even so, such a rare individual deserves a film that treats her not as a saint, but the remarkable, complex human being she actually is.
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50It can't be easy to turn one of the most stirring human rights dramas of the past quarter century into stultifying screen pageantry, but director Luc Besson and writer Rebecca Frayn have managed the trick with The Lady.
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40This time, though, the happy ending plays out in real life, while the screen version falls afoul of a laggardly pace, an earnest tone and a surfeit of domesticity.
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40Paralyzes history and human drama with relentless hagiography.
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25Contrast this to "The Iron Lady," a film which managed to be both obnoxiously condescending and flattering to the divisive British leader Margaret Thatcher, and left those of all political stripes irritated. The Lady, devoid of either iron or irony, is merely forgettable, a much deeper insult to its subject.
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63An appropriately respectful and dignified biopic.
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60The Lady is still titled away from the churning melodrama of Suu Kyi's country and toward the intimate dilemma of a loving couple forced apart by circumstance.
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42This is an inspiring and important story, but worthiness doesn't automatically equal quality. Had Besson looked for unexpected ways into Suu Kyi's life, or even had he indulged his old impulses and made a slick, surface-y Luc Besson movie, then The Lady might've been more memorable.
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40Who would have thought that the man behind such wackadoo fantasies as "The Professional" and "The Fifth Element" was capable of being so bloody boring?
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50This handsomely mounted picture is, at nearly 2 1/2 hours, far too long and indigestible for a film whose protagonist spends most of her screen time under house arrest.
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40We have a fumbling and fawning - if sincere - tribute to the living legend and a director who has never seemed more out of his element.
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40Impersonally directed by cinéma du look pioneer Luc Besson, The Lady was written by first-timer Rebecca Frayn, whose script has all the elegance and nuance of Google Translate.
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40One of those agonisingly well-intentioned films whose heart is in the right place, but everything else is wrong.
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50There's something immobile at the center of The Lady, a kind of Botoxed biopic with an unlikely director - Luc Besson - manning the syringe.
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65The accomplished actress Michelle Yeoh, who brought the project to Besson, is a regal beauty who brings off an uncanny resemblance to Suu Kyi largely through posture and the trademark flowers the activist wore in her hair.
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63The goings-on can rarely be called truly compelling, even if they're almost always generally pleasant.
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Apr 19, 201238In the final scene, the filmmakers nearly succeed in turning Suu Kyi into an Asian Eva Peron, down to the outspread arms, tossing an orchid to her worshippers.
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Apr 15, 201230Stolidly maudlin, this enervating sub-middlebrow pic is doomed to well-deserved commercial obscurity.
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Nov 27, 201150Besson responded to something in the story that prompted him to step outside his comfort zone, but exactly what that was is unclear in this well-intentioned but pedestrian retelling of a stirring true story.