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A stunning, difficult film.
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88It's Bacon who overcomes all obstacles.
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88Bacon is a strong and subtle actor, something that is often said but insufficiently appreciated. Here he employs all of his art.
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75What makes The Woodsman meaningful is Bacon's tortured suffering.
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75Kassell has serious talent. The movie is beautifully shot, and the performances are all spot-on. But like many young screenwriters today, she has overwritten her script to the point where everything is simply too tidy for the messy psychological material.
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75Bacon's portrait chills to the bone.
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75Tasteful but not compromised.
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75It takes a confident actor to accept a role like this and to perform it to flawless perfection.
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75The film manages the extraordinary feat of forcing us to empathize simultaneously with both the potential victim and the potential villain.
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63Melodrama triumphs. But here's at least some muted applause for a fine cast and filmmakers trying to confront the real world and its shadows.
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63An honest, honorable indie chamber drama that, if anything, errs on the side of caution. It benefits from a scrupulously observed performance by Kevin Bacon.
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63In real life, Bacon and Sedgwick are husband and wife. Their scenes mark one of the rare times an off-screen couple's intimacy enriches on-screen passion.
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80Bacon's performance is so riveting that you no longer see the 46-year-old actor.
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80It's Bacon's astonishing performance that is a quiet, challenging and ultimately discomfortingly human voice.
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67You can tell that everyone's whole heart is in this project, you just wish that a little more of the heart was conveyed on the screen.
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75It's a tough movie with a fearless performance by Bacon and brave filmgoers will be rewarded with a bracing experience.
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67Worth seeing for Bacon's lived-in minimalist purgatory, but the movie soft-pedals the nature of the desires he's at war with: the fact that they will never go away.
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67Bacon's mature performance serves a story that's considerably less sophisticated than he is, making The Woodsman less "brave" and more a slightly better-made movie of the week.
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100It is among the best and most delicately managed films of the year.
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90So thoughtful and provocative that we cannot help but become engrossed.
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80An engrossing study of a protagonist who variously inspires pity, clinical interest, fondness, and revulsion-sometimes all at once.
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80The film's core, anchored by a fine ensemble cast and a controlled, focused performance by Bacon, is completely solid.
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80The Woodsman should be pretty intolerable, but the writing-line by line-is heartfelt and probing, the direction gives the actors room to stretch out, and the performances are miraculous.
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80A stunningly crafted work from first-time feature director Nicole Kassell.
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80Bacon's subtle, assured performance keeps us with him every step of the way.
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80Not to be missed, if only for an unforgettable leading performance by Kevin Bacon.
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70What is more remarkable is that he (Bacon)has found a way, without the slightest hint of vanity or ostentation, to convey the inner life of a man who is almost entirely shut down.
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70Sympathy for a pedophile is difficult, but surely comprehension may be possible, and Bacon evokes it.
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Bacon conveys the weight of his character's anguished struggles through his economy of movement, and the powerful, spare script is refreshingly devoid of cant.
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60While The Woodsman gets the psychological profile right, it fails to make Bacon a man.
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30Overblown melodrama, as muddle-headed as it is palpably sincere.
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88One of the year's best.
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70Kassell's visual influences are evident -- she's clearly a fan of the down-and-dirty films of the '70s -- but the consistently fine performances smooth over the rough patches.
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60In a film that's carefully crafted but also airless and overcalculated, Mos Def walks away with every scene he's in because we're never sure what his character is up to, and we're never told.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 18 out of 25
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Mixed: 2 out of 25
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Negative: 5 out of 25
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JeffM.9