Snow Falling on Cedars

TNT RoughCut Christopher Brandon

Scott Hicks adapts David Guterson's best-selling novel as if it was poetry.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

The kind of richly layered film that Hollywood seldom attempts, much less brings off. But it's more than brought off here in grand, solid style and beautifully crafted detail.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Uusually satisfying in the way it unfolds.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Reflective, deliberate, building gradually to a climax that left me touched.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Flawed, but fascinating, this somber adaptation of David Guterson's award-winning novel is sometimes sluggish and difficult to follow, but it's also unexpectedly poetic.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

As good as it is in many ways, the film is not as emotionally gripping as it should be, and comes off as a rather predictable liberal statement.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Fails to completely engage the viewer at the basic level of story.

Mr. Showbiz Larry Terenzi

Hicks is far less interested in resolving dramatic conflicts than in framing shots.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

As cosmetically sanitized revisions of history go: This is as good as it gets.

Time Richard Schickel

Essentially a liberal soap opera.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Movies made from serious novels are often ridiculed as unworthy of their sources, but this one may be too worthy -- too reverent, too showy, too earnest.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

For all the beauty it struggles to bring forth, Snow Falling on Cedars is painfully prosaic.

Film.com Robert Horton

Not a crowd-pleasing, or even audience-oriented, movie; it's a two-hour-plus mood piece.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Has to fight to hold our attention and it doesn't always succeed.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

A prettily photographed yet morbidly gloomy movie.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

Ultimately there's something too measured, too controlled in his film.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Too chilly and distanced to build the emotional impact it would like to have.

USA Today Staff [Not Credited]

Compelling almost in spite of itself, thanks to the impressionistic imagery of cinematographer Robert Richardson.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Exceedingly blurred rendering of a simply told, artful novel.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Impeccably crafted but dramatically dull.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Never transports you to another place and time, as it intends to.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

This badly muddled adaptation of a complex novel chases after Guterson's many skeins and themes with no unifying principle in mind.

Film.com Sean Means

You just watch one carefully constructed but emotionally vacant image piled up on another - sometimes with regard to an overall effect, but often just for the sake of style over substance.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The year's most beautiful movie -- and surely one of the dullest.

LA Weekly John Patterson

The narrative chronology is so heavily hacked about, its tenses so addled and the material so thinly spread across so many characters, one can scarcely keep it straight in one's head without going cross-eyed.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Admirably high-minded and visually gorgeous but fatally anesthetized by its own grandiosity.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

Trying to act in this movie is like trying to stand upright in a blizzard.

Newsweek David Ansen

All shots and no scenes, which is nice for a picture book but deadly for drama.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Loaded with facile social themes, opaque characters, pointlessly intricate flashbacks, and inflated technique.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Looks exquisite, but don't bother digging deeper.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

Ultimately groans under the weight of its own quiet gorgeousness.