| 100 |
Chicago Tribune
This is a movie for all cultures and all people, for families and especially for those who have lost them.
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| 90 |
Washington Post
It's a masterful little film, and, thanks to Zhang's seasoned hands, it's subtly heartfelt but never manipulative.
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| 83 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Zhang Yimou is a master of intimate character pieces.
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| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly
Ken Takakura, a great rain-creased oak of an actor, delivers a quietly massive performance.
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| 80 |
Salon.com
This new picture will reach only a few devoted American spectators. That's too bad, because once you get used to the apparent flatness and emotional reserve of this picture, it's a sad, slyly comic tale of family trauma and reconciliation that packs a wallop.
|
| 80 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Turning away from his highly entertaining epics "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers," Zhang Yimou goes for utter simplicity in Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, a film of much distilled wit and wisdom.
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| 75 |
TV Guide
Zhang's film is sweet and sentimental nearly to a fault; luckily, he's such a master, you'll hardly notice how shamelessly you're being manipulated.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
G. Allen Johnson
Although "Riding" is a small-scale movie as opposed to a big-scale epic, it is just as ambitious.
|
| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Zhang is a master of detail and spectacle. There is also plenty of comedy, particularly in the scenes with linguistically challenged translators.
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| 75 |
Portland Oregonian
It's a film that can leave you on the fence. There's great facility with non-pro actors, with unusual locations, with both intimate and epic-scale scenes. Yet at the same time, Takata's reserve overwhelms the picture and makes its efforts to elicit emotions seem clumsy.
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| 75 |
Miami Herald
Cynics may not fall for its melodrama, but Riding Alone is good for everyone else, including children.
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| 70 |
The New Republic
Embedded here in a culture of formalities, with some of the arcs and gestures of that culture, it almost becomes an opera of its own.
|
| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
Unlikely to be ranked as one of Zhang's greatest accomplishments but is clearly the work of a major filmmaker. It is best seen as a heartfelt tribute to Takakura, as heroic and enduring a star as John Wayne.
|
| 70 |
Variety
Russell Edwards
A simple, low-budget, contempo dramedy -- with plenty of clever plot reversals.
|
| 70 |
The New York Times
Nathan Lee
A little uncanny (has it been digitally manipulated?) and a whole lot clichéd, the tableau speaks of melancholy graced by a pale sliver of hope. You'd roll your eyes if they weren't so dazzled.
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
It's the kind of story that shows more than it tells, a story that's forged in the spaces that exist in between characters and spaces.
|
| 63 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
My mood kept fluctuating, as did my reaction when the end credits rolled: This is seriously lovely; this is fluff; this is seriously lovely fluff.
|
| 60 |
Village Voice
Ella Taylor
Slow and pretty and duller than you'd hope for from an art-house sophisticate like Zhang.
|
| 50 |
New York Post
Riding Alone features a moving performance by Takakura (often called the Asian Clint Eastwood), as well as pretty cinematography. But the mushy script, co-written by Zhang, never rises above that of a TV soap opera.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
Robert Koehler
This is not storytelling by a confident artist. Even Zhang's former mastery of visual form has become shaky, with a pedestrian handling of dramatic scenes and a surfeit of picture-postcard landscape shots.
|
| 40 |
Film Threat
Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou has created so many memorable films (most recently the wuxia double-play "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers") that one can easily excuse his new clinker Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles.
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