Critic Reviews
| 100 |
Christian Science Monitor
Intelligent, revealing, and sometimes hilarious.
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| 80 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Frank Scheck
Filmmaker Devlin details this complicated series of events with clarity, a sense of drama and more than a few touches of dark humor.
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| 80 |
Variety
Made with deft evenhandedness, Paul Devlin's accomplished film plays almost like a fictional drama, containing suspense, comedy and some colorful characters.
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| 80 |
Village Voice
Ward Harkavy
Like the best documentaries, this one raises questions instead of providing pat answers. If only Devlin had taken his intrepid reporting a few steps further.
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| 80 |
The New York Times
A skillful assemblage of newsreel clips, cartoons ridiculing the American interlopers, television commercials and interviews with power officials and ordinary Georgians. It gives new and darker meaning to that comfy adage "We're all connected."
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| 75 |
Boston Globe
Part Marxist social drama and part Michael Moore corporation-needling, with fed-up residents trying to outsmart the big, bad naive company to keep their lights on for free.
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| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Devlin tells his story without bias but with shards of gallows humor.
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| 75 |
New York Daily News
To Devlin's great credit, he keeps us rapt throughout.
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| 75 |
New York Post
If the documentary has a star, it's pony-tailed AES exec Piers Lewis, who had the impossible job of getting Georgians to actually pay for their electricity.
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| 70 |
TV Guide
There's enough information packed into Paul Devlin's documentary about the woes besieging the former Soviet republic of Georgia for two movies.
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| 70 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
To its enormous credit, doesn't cast the conflict as cut-and-dried exploitation. It presents something altogether more complex--too complex, unfortunately, for an 85-minute documentary to elucidate perfectly.
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| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Bill White
Despite its shortcomings as objective reporting, Power Trip offers a glimpse into a sputtering culture that, after decades of communist rule, has little chance of survival in the modern world.
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| 50 |
Washington Post
Mark Jenkins
An instructive account of the perils of attempting to privatize decrepit public utilities in countries with stagnant economies.
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