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25An overwrought drama.
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75This well-acted melodrama paints a convincing portrait of its Montana milieu, and its best scenes suggest real insights into the paradoxical attitudes toward masculinity and sexuality that American men often feel compelled to assume.
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75What it offers are dozens of intimate moments that feel so true, they achieve a rare kind of grace. This sensitive indie drama was written and directed by brothers - and first-time feature filmmakers.
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80A bleak, lyrical meditation on the frontier spirit and American machismo and its torments.
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60The film's real strength lies in two excellent performances, from veteran Morse and up-and-comer Gosling.
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80Actor David Morse establishes himself as a truly formidable presence in this powerful first feature by Alex and Andrew Smith.
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80Though some of Slaughter Rule's conclusions are overly tidy, the film's powerful meditation on masculinity gets much of its credibility and punch from the two leads, especially Morse, a reliable character actor who sinks his teeth into a role with heavy physical and psychological demands.
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50Strong performances, a few dramatically potent scenes and a vividly specific evocation of locale barely offset hackneyed and muddled elements in a script that plays like a first draft.
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63A good-looking, if imperfectly plotted, coming-of-age feature -- that doesn't quite manage to sidestep the clichéd sport-as-metaphor-for-life trap.
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90The lead performances could hardly be better: Gosling, having stolen and propped up entire movies last year ("Murder by Numbers" and "The Believer"), crackles with the economical intensity of a young Tim Roth. Morse, who has racked up decades worth of idiosyncratic character parts, is monumental in this career-peak turn.
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70Has the virtue of sincerity but not that of restraint. Unlike Terrence Malick, whose shadow looms over the film's visual style, the Smiths over-explain, not grasping that all those barren fields and blood-red clouds are doing plenty of work for them.
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50This bleak debut feature from writer-directors Alex and Andrew Smith would be all but impossible to sit through if it weren’t for Ryan Gosling and Clea Duvall.
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60The best thing about The Slaughter Rule -- is that the film refuses to succumb to the temptation of a glorious Hollywood feel-good happy ending.