| 100 |
Baltimore Sun David Zurawik
For all his mastery of the filmmaker's craft, Lee's passion and sense of righteousness are what ultimately make the film so compelling. |
| 100 |
Detroit Free Press Mike Duffy
A documentary masterpiece. |
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle David Wiegand
As a film, "Levees" is a significant and exhaustive achievement. |
| 100 |
New York Daily News David Hinckley
"When the Levees Broke" not only ranks among Lee's career bests as a film project, but it is the year's finest TV documentary to date. |
| 100 |
People Weekly Tom Gliatto
The whole thing has a beautifully measured pace. [28 Aug 2006, p.35] |
| 100 |
New York Magazine John Leonard
When the Levees Broke... is the class act of this summer’s documentaries, and the whole year, too--something between a nineteenth-century novel and anthropology with a sword, a combination of Balzac and Fats Domino. |
| 91 |
Christian Science Monitor Gloria Goodale
Cumulatively, the everyday voices of those who waited in vain for help that never came, mingled with the concern of prominent national figures, presents a poignant picture of official blunders and personal loss, and provides important national lessons if another threat this size hits an American city. |
| 91 |
Entertainment Weekly Gilbert Cruz
A harrowing expose. [25 Aug 2006, p.80] |
| 90 |
TV Guide Matt Roush
This eloquent, angry film is one of Lee's best and certainly ranks among his most important. |
| 90 |
Variety Joe Leydon
Charged with profound sorrow, galvanizing outrage and defiant resolve, Spike Lee's extraordinary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" renders the worst natural disaster in U.S. history... as a perfect storm of catastrophic weather, human error, socioeconomic inequity and bureaucratic dysfunction. |
| 90 |
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Tony Norman
The result is a breathtaking, often depressing and always riveting account of the nation's rapid descent into the contemporary heart of darkness that was New Orleans nearly a year ago. |
| 90 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Melanie McFarland
One might think that four hours of this is too much; by the end, you realize that it's barely enough. |
| 90 |
Slate Troy Patterson
It can get to feel arduous--unflinching explorations of genuine tragedy do tend to wear you down--but it's never gratuitous or dull. |
| 90 |
Washington Post Lynne Duke
Along with visuals that capture all aspects of the disaster, these bitter, wounded, poignant, thoughtful, expert and often foul-mouthed voices are knitted together in a tightly edited film that manages to sustain four hours without a central narrator. |
| 90 |
Newark Star-Ledger Matt Zoller Seitz
One of Lee's greatest and most deeply personal works. |
| 88 |
San Jose Mercury News/Contra Costa Times Charlie McCollum
A soaring opera set in the key of outrage. |
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times Doug Elfman
"When the Levees Broke" is hard to watch. It's hard to take. The anger. The sadness. All over again. |
| 80 |
Kansas City Star Aaron Barnhart
Despite its biases and often strident tone, “When the Levees Broke” can fairly be called the definitive chronicle of the 11 months since Katrina swept away much of the Crescent City. |
| 80 |
The New York Times Stephen Holden
Most of the events in the first two hours will be familiar to anyone who watched television news in the disaster’s early weeks. It is in the last two parts — which examine the uncertain futures of tens of thousands of evacuees, analyze the engineering failures that allowed the flood to breach the levees, and speculate about the city’s future — that the movie rises to greatness. |
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times Paul Brownfield
"When the Levees Broke" isn't so much investigative as impressionistic, the kind of storytelling you still get on a radio show like Ira Glass' "This American Life." |
| 80 |
LA Weekly Robert Abele
If you think the first two hours -- the hurricane, the floods, the convention center, the absent FEMA -- is the disturbing part, brace yourself for the stories in the last two hours: dispersed families, stagnant rebuilding efforts, people finding the dead bodies of their loved ones in houses that were carelessly marked by search teams as having no corpses, the special hell of dealing with insurance companies, etc. |
| 80 |
Hollywood Reporter Barry Garron
A comprehensive look at what the storm did to the lives of the people who survived it. |
| 70 |
Newsday Verne Gay
"When the Levees Broke"... is powerful, thoughtful and deeply compassionate. That said, "Levees" is often scattershot and undisciplined. |
| 70 |
Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray
[When] "When the Levees Broke" finally gets going, it is, like the water that poured under, over and through those poorly constructed barriers, unstoppable. |
| 60 |
Orlando Sentinel Hal Boedeker
Lee's main mistake is quickly apparent. He lets so many people from New Orleans sound off and reminisce that the program becomes a talking-head epic. |
