Enduring Love

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

What blows us away is the power of Ifans' moist puppy eyes and chilling smile as a true believer undeterred by reality.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

British director, Roger Michell, strikes an assured balance between intense mood piece and Gothic chiller.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Enduring Love's plot inevitably drifts into “Fatal Attraction” territory, but its wholesale immersion in Craig's deteriorating condition render it a wrenching, uncompromising study of the human mind in freefall.

Newsweek David Ansen

A meditation on love, faith and science in the guise of a thriller, the movie's a tad schematic, but thoroughly gripping.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's the best kind of movie: so alive in its storytelling that only in retrospect do you realize that the ideas represent a metaphysical inquiry.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Technically outstanding and the performances are strong.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Most movies remain at the top level of action: They are about what happens. A few consider the meaning of what happened, and even fewer deal with the fact that we have a choice, some of the time, about what happens and what we do about it.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Contains impeccable performances, especially by the frightening Ifans.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A gripping, very intelligent British thriller. Slowly, inexorably, it ties you in knots.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Haunting case study of a romantic obsession.

USA Today Claudia Puig

A suspense thriller that intelligently explores the ideal of lasting love.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Spellbinding.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

If you don't compare it with the novel, it's one of the season's better films.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Adaptation of Ian McEwan's 1997 novel takes a surprising number of liberties with the text, given the author's stature, but his name on the credits as associate producer would suggest his stamp of approval.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Enduring Love is an intellectual investigation of love from three equally frustrating perspectives - the physical, the spiritual and that mixture of emotion, psychology and interpretation we call art - couched loosely in a cool stalker thriller.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

That climax stretches credibility, but the whole point of the piece is that the Joe of the opening has become someone else.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

This is a grim, often lifeless tale played with such humorless intensity that watching it is far more like an endurance contest than a love affair.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

A fatal lack of character development dooms Enduring Love as little more than a fleeting curiosity.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Has more psychological complexity than the average suspense drama, and the results prove more satisfying than not.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Ultimately, the movie suffers from the same fate as its characters. That first explosive scene creates a state of shock, leaving everyone and everything to drift about in a numbing vacuum.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Movie love is usually so idealized it ennobles behavior that ordinarily would be considered stalking. Enduring Love deliberately smudges the line between what is bizarre and what is simply human nature.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Thus does a book of literary distinction become not-so-grand-Guignol.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Mr. Michell whips the camera around too much and cuts into his scenes too quickly, but he pumps juice into this thin story and, together with his performers, keeps a movie going that might otherwise crash-land.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Director Roger Michell seems genuinely taken with the contrast between brotherly love and homosexual obsession, but these themes are overwhelmed by the suspense machinery.

TV Guide Ken Fox

A cerebral thriller that dares to ask a fundamental question: What, exactly, is love?

The Hollywood Reporter Luke Sader

Daniel Craig, in his meatiest film role to date, delivers his usual incisive performance, even if this intimate drama of contemporary Londoners pushes the boundaries of credibility.

Empire Nick De Semlyen

Some great acting and visuals make up for this thriller’s frostiness.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

There's something flat and obscure about this well-acted stalker movie.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

This depressing look at love isn't quite worth enduring.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Ultimately a creepy tale.

Dallas Observer Melissa Levine

The result is creepy and unpleasant.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Filmmaker Roger Michell doesn't so much adapt Ian McEwan's fine novel Enduring Love, a surgically precise anatomy of romance and obsession, as eviscerate it and wave its entrails before the audience.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The ideas behind Enduring Love may be fascinating, but they don’t play; they sulk.

Premiere Peter Debruge

One of those outrageous stalker thrillers in which so much trouble could have been avoided if the characters had only thought to call the police.

Slate David Edelstein

This slender, increasingly monotonous stalker plot feels ludicrously overintellectualized-full of hot air.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

If Enduring Love doesn't make sense as a thriller, it's equally nonsensical as the parable it wants to be.

Village Voice Ed Park

Craig keeps Joe Rose on a hair trigger, but Morton is wasted as Claire; Ifans simply looks stoned.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Although this script starts off with great zest, it's ultimately a disappointment.