|

New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search
Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

34
10,000 B.C.
69
Bank Job, The
52
Be Kind Rewind
47
Boarding Gate
46
Bonneville
42
Bucket List, The
70
Caramel
44
Chaos Theory
54
Charlie Bartlett
63
City of Men
36
College Road Trip
78
Control
59
Definitely, Maybe
41
Drillbit Taylor
36
Eye, The
57
Flawless
29
Fool's Gold
41
Funny Games
57
Hammer, The
68
Honeydripper
67
In Bruges
xx
Jack and Jill vs. the World
79
Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
35
Jumper
30
Meet Bill
9
Meet the Spartans
52
My Blueberry Nights
50
Other Boleyn Girl, The
48
Penelope
90
Persepolis
44
Rails & Ties
36
Remember the Daze
44
Ruins, The
47
Semi-Pro
24
Sex and Death 101
76
Shotgun Stories
37
Shutter
63
Signal, The
40
Sleepwalking
62
Spiderwick Chronicles, The
50
Step Up 2 the Streets
61
Stop Loss
33
Superhero Movie
54
Tracey Fragments, The
45
Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns
59
Under the Same Moon
40
Vantage Point
46
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins
51
Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland
17
Witless Protection
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
90
Persepolis
79
Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
78
Control
76
Shotgun Stories
70
Caramel
69
Bank Job, The
68
Honeydripper
67
In Bruges
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
63
City of Men
63
Signal, The
62
Spiderwick Chronicles, The
61
Stop Loss
59
Under the Same Moon
59
Definitely, Maybe
57
Flawless
57
Hammer, The
54
Charlie Bartlett
54
Tracey Fragments, The
52
Be Kind Rewind
52
My Blueberry Nights
51
Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland
50
Step Up 2 the Streets
50
Other Boleyn Girl, The
48
Penelope
47
Boarding Gate
47
Semi-Pro
46
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins
46
Bonneville
45
Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns
44
Rails & Ties
44
Chaos Theory
44
Ruins, The
42
Bucket List, The
41
Funny Games
41
Drillbit Taylor
40
Vantage Point
40
Sleepwalking
37
Shutter
36
Remember the Daze
36
Eye, The
36
College Road Trip
35
Jumper
34
10,000 B.C.
33
Superhero Movie
30
Meet Bill
29
Fool's Gold
24
Sex and Death 101
17
Witless Protection
9
Meet the Spartans
xx
Jack and Jill vs. the World
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Bloody Sunday
Paramount Classics
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for violence and language
Starring
James Nesbitt,
Tim Pigott-Smith,
Nicholas Farrell,
Gerard McSorley,
Kathy Keira Clarke,
Allan Gildea,
Gerard Crossan,
and
Mary Moulds
This controversial and critically acclaimed film depicts the events of January 30, 1972, when 27 civilians were shot by the British army during a peaceful civil rights march. The event fueled a 25-year cycle of violence between Britain and elements of Ireland, North and South. (Paramount Classics)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Paul Greengrass
Don Mullan (book)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Paul Greengrass
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: April 22, 2003
Video: April 22, 2003
Theatrical: October 4, 2002
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
107 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
UK / Ireland |
Audience Award for World Cinema (tie), 2002 Sundance Film Festival; Golden Berlin Bear (tie), Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, 2002 Berlin International Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
It's a mad cycle of arrogance and despair, and Bloody Sunday etches it onto your nervous system.

100
Newsweek
David Ansen
Brings history to life with an uncanny sense of realism.

100
Chicago Tribune
Mark Caro
By re-imagining a pivotal, terrible 24 hours, Greengrass has made a must-see film that is timely - and timeless.

100
The New Yorker
David Denby
For the viewer, the miracle of Bloody Sunday is that firm moral judgment can exist side by side with a wild and bitter exhilaration in the sheer physicality of violence. [7 Oct 2002, p. 108]
100
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
A bracing, unblinking work that serves as a painful elegy and sobering cautionary tale.

100
San Francisco Chronicle
Edward Guthmann
A great achievement: tense and passionate, a film that one feels not just emotionally but also physically.

100
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
An extraordinary film ... that's impossible to dismiss or leave unmoved.

100
Variety
Scott Foundas
A stunning work, revisiting controversial events with journalistic objectivity and a meticulous eye for detail.

100
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
The most visceral and cumulatively powerful account of civil war since Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers."

91
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
It's raw, visceral stuff that precious few movies are capable of equaling.

90
Chicago Reader
Patrick Z. McGavin
The movie's searing conclusion left me numb and overwhelmed.

90
Dallas Observer
Gregory Weinkauf
Amazingly, almost every note of every performance in Bloody Sunday rings true.

90
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Once positions hardened, tragedy was all but inevitable, and Bloody Sunday" does the spirit of that awful day full and unforgettable justice.

90
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Bloody Sunday doesn't surrender its grip on the viewer even after the action shifts from the streets of Bogside to a local hospital where the weeping masses are still under the guns of the war-painted British soldiers.

90
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
The level of accomplishment in the filmmaking is overwhelming.

90
LA Weekly
John Patterson
A scrupulously even-handed account, free of ideological or tribal partisanship, based on eyewitness accounts by survivors and the anonymous "Paras" themselves.

89
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
A triumph in anguish.

88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
One view of what happened that day, a very effective one. And as an act of filmmaking, it is superb: A sense of immediate and present reality permeates every scene.

88
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Surges forward with barely a respite. It's like watching a propane factory burn, waiting for the tanks inside to explode, and when they do, we're right in the middle of it.

88
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
The film is conducted in a delirious cinema-verite style; most of what you see has a brutal, you-are-there immediacy. You're not merely watching history, you're engulfed by it.

88
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
An astonishing re-creation of the Londonderry massacre of January 1972.

88
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Greengrass and his tremendously smart and emotionally agile lead actor, James Nesbitt, paint their portrait of a good politician without illusion or sentimentality.

83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
There's no denying the skill and flair with which director Paul Greengrass has restaged this unhappy event, creating an uncanny sense of immediacy and allowing us to be a fly on the wall at a seminal '70s tragedy.

80
Film Threat
Tim Merrill
A gripping experience, and often downright sickening.

80
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
As a terrifying example of what can happen when too many angry people are crowded into too small a space, it's a gripper.

80
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
A harrowing lesson in unintended -- and intended -- consequences.
80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
At its best, Bloody Sunday produces the same chilling illusion of history writ large, clearly detailing the strategies of both sides, then blankly observing the conflict through unadorned, newsreel camera stock and the precise orchestration of large-scale chaos.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
The result is a grim, startling motion picture.

75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
An impressive film accomplishment, a combination of technique and extremely specific detail that reminds viewers how potent a rhetorical force the medium can be.

75
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
What Bloody Sunday lacks in clarity, it makes up for with a great, fiery passion.

70
TV Guide
Ken Fox
The accents are thick and the soundtrack noisy, but even as the screen explodes in chaos, Greenglass maintains a solid grip on the story.


The average user rating for this movie is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 20 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Read more user comments...
Discuss this movie in our forums |
|