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The Messenger
Metascore
77 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 32 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 27 out of 32
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 32
  3. Negative: 1 out of 32
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  1. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    100
    "The Hurt Locker" may be getting all the attention and awards but The Messenger is at least as good and perhaps, given its delicate handling of a sensitive subject, even better.
  2. New Orleans Times-Picayune
    Reviewed by: Mike Scott
    100
    It's a tremendously moving drama, filled with heartbreak, humor and, more importantly, humanity.
  3. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    90
    No movie can convey the truth of war to those of us who have not lived through it, but The Messenger, precisely by acknowledging just how hard it is to live with that truth, manages to bring it at least partway home.
  4. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: David Denby
    90
    This is a fully felt, morally alert, marvellously acted piece of work. Despite the grim subject, it's a sweet-tempered movie, with moments of explosive humor-an entertainment.
  5. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    88
    Its truths are personal. It means to shake you. And does.
  6. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    88
    This is a writer's picture, no less than a visual experience that approaches its subject as tactfully as the messengers do. No fancy camerawork. It happens, we absorb it.
  7. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    88
    The Messenger is not itself grueling, which is practically a miracle. Rather, this pungent little chamber piece offers a full yet delicate range of emotions, and it humanizes its characters so that polemics are left in the background.
  8. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    88
    This heart-rending tale also is a mesmerizing one because of several superb performances, particularly those of Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson.
  9. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    88
    The best war movies don't preach against war: They remind us of the costs for soldiers and families and ask us to consider whether those costs are worth paying. The Messenger does that without firing a bullet or putting us on a battlefield.
  10. Orlando Sentinel
    Reviewed by: Roger Moore
    88
    It's an unblinking look into the lives of soldiers doing the most thankless job of all.
  11. NPR
    Reviewed by: Bob Mondello
    85
    Messengers with the worst possible message, they nonetheless manage to be human and alive, humorous and lively. In a film that itself bears such sad tidings about the costs of war, that is an affirming, even an inspiring, gift.
  12. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    83
    There's nothing drab about the tormented place these men take each other to. You'll want to go along.
  13. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: M. E. Russell
    83
    The only scenes that felt "actorly" come when the pair drunkenly crash an ex-girlfriend's wedding party. Otherwise, The Messenger has a verisimilitude rare in films tackling this subject matter.
  14. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    83
    Captures the fear factor in the lives of these men without turning them into the usual home front head cases.
  15. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Justin Lowe
    80
    Moverman adopts a functional directing style that gives full rein to the actors' impressive performances.
  16. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Joshua Rothkopf
    80
    The movie does an uncommonly sensitive job probing the psychologies of blocked men, less so the urges of a widow who needs more than comforting words.
  17. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    80
    The actors playing parents and spouses (among them Steve Buscemi, Halley Feiffer, Portia, and Kevin Hagan) are stunningly believable. I'm not sure how Morton made sense of her character's ebbs and flows, but I never doubted her. She's a mariner in uncharted seas of emotion.
  18. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Aaron Hillis
    80
    What really resonates is the complex tale of camaraderie between two men whose only hope of avoiding self-destruction is to let down their guard--which is, of course, against protocol.
  19. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Betsy Sharkey
    80
    The film belongs to Foster. The actor always makes the most of what is handed him, though he's usually required to find his footings around the margins, as he did as the crazed cowboy in "3:10 to Yuma" or the crazed druggie in "Alpha Dog."
  20. Variety
    Reviewed by: Peter Debruge
    80
    Nobody plays angry like Ben Foster, but compassion is something new for the actor, who softens his crazy-man shtick to deliver a complex and moving performance in The Messenger.
  21. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    78
    One of the rare movies that communicates honestly and artfully about the real casualties of war: the surviving combatants.
  22. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    75
    With the insight and sensitivity of an insider, The Messenger illuminates the sometimes invisible victims of war -- the survivors -- and a pain that is tolerated but never quite healed.
  23. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    75
    A privileged glimpse into people's private pain, a drama shot with the simplicity and immediacy of a documentary.
  24. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    75
    Together, under the assured direction of first-time feature filmmaker Oren Moverman, these three actors tell a story that is at once hard-hitting and bizarrely gentle.
  25. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    75
    The scenes between Montgomery and Stone in plainclothes would seem to be tangential to Moverman's movie, but they're very much its point. Only in uniform do these men make sense to themselves.
  26. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    Reviewed by: Joe Williams
    75
    The Messenger is the debut film of writer and director Oren Moverman, but it's worldly wise, with two well-rounded characters.
  27. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    63
    For all the film's gritty verisimilitude, The Messenger is not the great Iraq War movie that Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" is.
  28. Empire
    Reviewed by: Andrew Male
    Jun 13, 2011
    60
    A worthy addition to the canon of Iraq war films, The Messenger has a gentle humanity that creeps under your skin. Look out for a terrific Harrelson turn, too.
  29. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    60
    Feels more respectful than real.
  30. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    60
    Whenever writer-director Oren Moverman moves past these scattered and admittedly voyeuristic moments into the lives of the two soldiers, the movie drifts into received wisdom and unconvincing romance.
  31. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Noel Murray
    50
    Foster and Harrelson always stick to the Army's orders about what to say and how to behave. After a while, The Messenger starts to feel equally dogged about following a pat script.
  32. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    25
    The similar Kevin Bacon HBO movie "Taking Chance" got there first. Worse news: The earlier movie was sober, meticulous and quietly convincing, not a shouty, shoddy bore like this piece of flummery.
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User Reviews

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User Score
7.8 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 37 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 15
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 15
  3. Negative: 1 out of 15
  1. lasttimeisaw
    8
    Even securing Hollywood veteran Woody Harrelson his second Oscar nomination, the film has eluded me until now, and a long overdue viewing proves it is an overlooked gem on the recent war-trauma film list. The breakthrough effort of the film is its one-of-a-kind perspective, with zero scenes from the violent frontline (including the usual gambit of fly-on-the-wall clips), the modus operandi aims at the ominous casualty notification soldiers and one theatrical oomph originates from the various poignant reactions from the next-of-kins of dead soldiers in Iraq when they are being notified, a faintly tricky scheme to gain the empathy towards both the film and its main characters, which is a laudable feat and very operative due to a splendid cast and unostentatious script (the formality of notification is swell written). Budding as one of the versatile young actors in Hollywood, Ben Foster excels in his not-so-frequent leading role as an ostensible war-hero plagued by a hidden secret, typifies ideally a post-war anguish-tortured individual. Foster generates a magnificent screen chemistry both with his tutor-cum-friend Woody Harrelson (a well-developed supporting role as Foster’s superior captain, whose behind-the-scene background story is finely underlined by Harrelson’s scene-stealing faculty) and with a never-disheartening Samantha Morton, the paragraph when Morton unravels her inner affection and grief to Foster in her home is a total tour-de-force. So, the war-blasting viewpoint has been established in both cases with its direct victims potently (soldiers and their families), all the proofs are indisputable, and for majority of its audience who has no mighty to change any political imbroglio towards warfare, the film at least hardens the determination of respecting each individual in a more altruistic way and maybe the world will get better day by day.… Full Review »
  2. Nazgulero
    1
    The movie started out pretty good, but about 15 minutes into it, descended straight into Absurdia. I am not a military man, but it is hard for me to imagine that notification officers would act like that. In addition, what is the appeal of yet another movie showing two guys who basically cannot handle life, and opt for the bottle ? It's old, it's boring, and nature itself selects these individuals for extinction, because no woman in her right mind would stay with them. The movie got that part right. I am in no way saying that war is not horrible, and that soldiers get traumatized, But as soon as you pop that beer, you are just one of the countless losers...… Full Review »
  3. nutterjr
    7
    Without firing a single bullet or be shown horrific scenes of the battlefield, The Messenger shows the pain that comes with war through the eyes of those that stay behind... Credit to the cast that deliver a subtle but yet emotionally rich performances.… Full Review »
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