| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
You could say that Seraphim Falls, was no better than the typical Westerns of the 1950s and '60s--which I think underrates it. But those typical Westerns were pretty darn good, and so is Seraphim Falls.
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| 80 |
Chicago Reader
After decades of revisionist westerns, this drama by TV veteran David Von Ancken is impressive for its stubborn classicism.
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| 75 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
If Seraphim Falls' audience appreciates its good points and ignores an ending that tries too hard, they'll just be following a grand genre-buff tradition.
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| 75 |
Premiere
Neeson and Brosnan, along with the beautiful location photography from DP John Toll, keeps you involved even when Von Ancken's heavy-handed direction threatens to bog the proceedings down.
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| 75 |
New York Daily News
This is an entertaining Western with some earnest ideas about forgiveness, redemption and the loss of innocents.
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| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It fulfills a lot of the criteria for a successful oater: spectacular scenery, an evocative frontier atmosphere, an ensemble of enjoyably tight-lipped performances, and plenty of stylish violence.
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| 75 |
USA Today
A psychological drama with an intriguing ambiguity that challenges the viewer's loyalties and preconceived notions. For the first half of the movie you find yourself on the side of a hunted man. Then as the story unfolds, his pursuer becomes the one you root for.
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| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
Seraphim Falls is essentially one long, bleak stalk-and-kill action thriller.
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| 70 |
New York Magazine
Given that the movie is one long chase--Neeson's motive withheld until the end, the monotony broken only by the slaying of one member of his posse after another--the film is surprisingly gripping.
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| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly
Neeson and Brosnan are supremely well-matched foils, though I do wish that the filmmaker, David Von Ancken, had lent his sparsely mythic tale just a twinge of something...new.
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| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
Josh Rosenblatt
With Seraphim Falls, Brosnan shows himself, finally, to be an actor of real skill – rather than just a pretty face, a great head of hair, and a buttery British accent – capable not only of playing a real human being but one with a tortured soul and a dodgy past as well.
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| 63 |
TV Guide
Television director David Von Ancken's metaphorical revenge Western wears its influences on its sleeve, but adds nothing to the genre that hasn't already been explored in the quietly demythologizing films of Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher, the baroque, operatic Italian Westerns of Sergio Leone and his less-familiar peers, and even in Sam Fuller's deranged, post-Civil War psychodrama "Run of the Arrow"(1956).
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| 60 |
Los Angeles Times
Brosnan and Neeson make fine adversaries mining the terse dialogue for veiled dramatic fervor.
|
| 60 |
Village Voice
Robert Wilonsky
Seraphim Falls has decent pep in its step till the final 30 minutes, when it's finally revealed why Neeson's bounty hunter is after Brosnan's surly mountain man. The flashback finale and all that comes after (and keeps on comin') drags on so long even the leads look exhausted. Till then, it's yet another replay of "The Most Dangerous Game," and Brosnan and Neeson are game for it.
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| 58 |
Portland Oregonian
Seraphim isn't totally satisfying, even if you're prepared for an arty Western. It's pokey and odd in a distant, slightly self-conscious way.
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| 50 |
The Hollywood Reporter
A beautifully shot (by Oscar-winning cinematographer John Toll) but dramatically empty pursuit picture set in the untamed West.
|
| 50 |
Variety
Aside from spasms of brutal violence, however, there's nothing rousing or new here.
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| 50 |
Wall Street Journal
Before long, though, things take a turn from simplicity to sententiousness, then to surreal silliness, and finally to a mano-à-mano contest, on a parched desert floor, over which man gets the best close-ups.
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| 50 |
The New York Times
Archetypes and symbols solemnly parade through Seraphim Falls, a handsome, old-fashioned western of few words and heavy meanings that unfolds with the sanctimonious grandeur of a biblical allegory.
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| 50 |
New York Post
The biblically themed Seraphim Falls moseys along very slowly, climaxing with a lengthy series of flashbacks and an appearance by Anjelica Huston as a medicine woman who may or not be the devil.
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| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
A Western short on dialogue and long on pomposity, is little more than an extended chase scene down a snow-filled mountaintop to a desert floor.
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