Metacritic Film

George Washington

Starring Candace Evanofski, Donald Holden, Curtis Cotton III, and Damian Lee

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Cowboy Booking International
Drama
89 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters October 27, 2000

Set in the landscape of a rural Southern town, George Washington is a stunning portrait of how a group of young kids come to grips with a hard world of choices and consequences. During an innocent game in an abandoned amusement park, a member of the group dies. (Cowboy Booking International)

WRITTEN BY
David Gordon Green

DIRECTED BY
David Gordon Green

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

81 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 Chicago Sun-Times
Like Malick's "Days of Heaven," it is not about plot, but about memory and regret. It remembers a summer that was not a happy summer, but there will never again be a summer so intensely felt, so alive, so valuable.
100 Christian Science Monitor
Green tells the tale through leisurely, eye-catching shots that allow the young cast members to imbue their characters with striking credibility and intensity.
90 The New York Times
This dream of a movie is set in such a place; with its delicate shifts of tone, it could be a fairy tale by Faulkner
90 Rolling Stone
Green has created a work of startling originality that will haunt you for a good, long time.
90 LA Weekly
May turn out to be the finest American indie of the year.
89 Austin Chronicle
Director David Gordon Green has made a work of uncommon beauty and intelligence, one that is smart enough to trust its characters and the technical contributions of its crew.
88 Chicago Tribune
A picture about America with the blinders off, a film about heroism that makes you chuckle and feel sad - and a film about childhood that lets us reenter that lost world and see the grass, sky and sunlight the way they once looked, in the golden hours.
83 Entertainment Weekly
A peculiar combination of willful meandering and matter of fact violence, and it occasionally confounds in its attempts to exalt.
80 Village Voice
It's at once brilliant and inept.
80 Time
It stands, soars on its own. It moves to a seductive rhythm and vision.
75 New York Post
For those willing to work a bit at it, this is the sort of artistry many American independent movies aspire to - but rarely achieve.
75 Philadelphia Inquirer
Although rough, it's a gem.
75 New York Daily News
None of the children are professionals, and their uncontrived performances lend a painfully real quality to what becomes a rather lyrical story.
75 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
A first-rate student film, but not much more.
75 San Francisco Chronicle
Hardly perfect or fully successful, but it's strange and strangely beautiful -- a unique work of art.
70 Chicago Reader
Has memorable characters and images. Yet the story is elusive and occasionally puzzling, and some of the ideas are amorphous and self-conscious.
63 Charlotte Observer
He (writer/director David Gordon Green) fired his arrow straight at a worthwhile target, but it fell a little short.
50 TV Guide
Stylized to the point of poetry.

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