Brassed Off

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Herman handled his script cleanly and cast the picture well. [09Jun1997 Pg 30]

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

The pitch of the script, written by director Mark Herman, isn't perfect. But these earthy blokes are an engaging lot, the soot of the earth, with an admirably wry view of their bleak situations. [23May1997 Pg 03.D]

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Brassed Off is a sweet film with a lot of anger at its core.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Brassed Off! is a traditional feel-good motion picture with an element of social commentary thrown in for good measure.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack

The characters are beautifully drawn in this bittersweet melodrama written and directed by Mark Herman.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Brassed Off is shamelessly manipulative and sentimental, but in an agreeably familiar way.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

The music's great, but frequent tight shots of actors ostensibly blowing their horns look phony enough to be distracting.

Variety Derek Elley

This well-played, often very sparky dramedy about the shenanigans in a northern brass band composed of miners threatened with pit closure gets a bad attack of social realism in the latter stages that rocks the crowded craft.

Austin Chronicle Russell Smith

In the end, though, the undeniable power and emotional richness of this film swing the balance toward the good.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

There's a double meaning in the title of this folksy, relentlessly political, heavy-handed story, written and directed by Mark Herman and set among the coal mines of Yorkshire, England, in 1992.

Empire Ian Freer

However, writer-director Mark Herman never really achieves the correct balance between the serious and the feelgood, allowing an uneasy tone to prevail, while the small screen style and supporting cast of familiar TV faces suggests this would play more comfortably on the box.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

If you're in a triumph of the human spirit frame of mind, this is your cup of dark, sweet tea.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Brassed Off gets bogged down in sentimentality; and that political agenda is spread on thick.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

An odd duck of a movie, it's really a British Labor Party television commercial bitterly shoehorned into the cheesy format of an American triumph fantasy, with a horn section.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

As well-meaning elegies go, especially ones to working stiffs prematurely ripped from their subterranean roots, Brassed Off is the pits: It's a miner opus in a minor key.

San Francisco Examiner Walter Addiego

Writer-director Mark Herman seems genuinely moved by the plight of the mining communities, but his attempt to translate those feelings into a story shows the effects of hard labor.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Herman isn't sure if he's doing a big-statement picture or a tiny treasure of a comedy, and his confusion throws Brassed Off off balance.

Los Angeles Times John Anderson

The difficulty is that Brassed Off operates at an emotional pitch that starts at a crescendo and never relents--rendering almost everything equally inconsequential.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

Trimmed to an hour, and tucked between a documentary on snails and an episode of Coronation Street, writer-director Mark Herman's Brassed Off could prove lively watching indeed. As it is, however, his pedestrian if sweetly well-meaning inspirational about a coal-mining town done in by Thatcherism is too long, too laborious and 15 years too late.