Bloody Sunday

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's a mad cycle of arrogance and despair, and Bloody Sunday etches it onto your nervous system.

Newsweek David Ansen

Brings history to life with an uncanny sense of realism.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

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

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]

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A bracing, unblinking work that serves as a painful elegy and sobering cautionary tale.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

A great achievement: tense and passionate, a film that one feels not just emotionally but also physically.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

An extraordinary film ... that's impossible to dismiss or leave unmoved.

Variety Scott Foundas

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

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The most visceral and cumulatively powerful account of civil war since Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers."

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's raw, visceral stuff that precious few movies are capable of equaling.

Chicago Reader Patrick Z. McGavin

The movie's searing conclusion left me numb and overwhelmed.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Amazingly, almost every note of every performance in Bloody Sunday rings true.

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.

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.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The level of accomplishment in the filmmaking is overwhelming.

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.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

A triumph in anguish.

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.

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.

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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

An astonishing re-creation of the Londonderry massacre of January 1972.

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.

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.

Film Threat Tim Merrill

A gripping experience, and often downright sickening.

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.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

A harrowing lesson in unintended -- and intended -- consequences.

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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The result is a grim, startling motion picture.

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.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

What Bloody Sunday lacks in clarity, it makes up for with a great, fiery passion.

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.