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Free Zone

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 15 critic reviews
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Based on 0 votes
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by:
Amos Gitai
Marie-Jose Sanselme
Directed by: Amos Gitai
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 7, 2006
DVD: May 29, 2007
Running Time: 90 minutes, Color
Origin: Israel / Belgium / France / Spain
Language(s): English / Hebrew / Arabic / Spanish (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Natalie Portman, Hana Laszlo, Hiam Abbass, Carmen Maura, Makram Khoury, Aki Avni, Uri Klauzner, and Liron Levo
Amos Gitai's beautiful new film is a quietly sweeping movie about intersected lives in transit. (New Yorker Films)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Alila Kadosh Kedma Kippur Yom Yom
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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...
Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Gitai's experimental technique in Free Zone is dizzying, sometimes thrilling.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Natalie Portman demonstrates tour de force weeping in the back of a taxi as an American searching for her roots in Israel.
Read Full Review >Premiere Ethan Alter
For all its intelligence, Free Zone has disappointingly little to say.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
A minor movie on a major subject, a drama with an almost unbearable lightness.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Unfortunately, the characters feel more like symbols than people, despite strong performances, including what might be Portman's finest work to date.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
Amos Gitai's most satisfying pic since war drama "Kippur." Schematic set-up is given a human face by fine performances and a physical journey that's often more interesting than the characters' emotional ones, which are weakened by the Israeli auteur's tendency toward convenient doctrinaire-ism and chunks of expository dialogue.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray
Like a lot of Gitaï's films, Free Zone is part history, part allegory, and part art. Both the history and art hold their fascinations.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
Free Zone is similar to the car-based films of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami but with a more improvised, less-finished feel.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Unfortunately, the message is made clear within the first 10 minutes, leaving us with about 80 minutes of thematic repetition.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The movie works best as a car's-eye travelogue of Jordan. And the three women might be good company on another, less stressful trip. Say to the Caribbean.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
The three women deliver solid performances, but the film is diluted by the use of flashbacks superimposed over present-time scenes. The result is visual chaos.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Jessica Winter
Oddly, in representing a private conflict as the microcosm of an unsolvable catastrophe, Free Zone only manages to miniaturize both.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Despite a provocative climax, the movie settles into a ponderous collection of soliloquies.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
If the strong performances of its three stars infuse this metaphorically clotted movie with some life, the screenplay (some of which was improvised) has a weak narrative pulse. This political essay posing as a movie makes the mistake of confusing longwinded storytelling with compelling drama.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge
A road picture mired by unsteady camera work, lackadaisical pacing and cumbersome speechmaking, Free Zone is an excruciating cinematic trek. Israeli director Amos Gitai's narrative, both visually and conversationally, is a disappointing dud.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 0.0 (out of 10) based on 0 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
