Things We Lost in the Fire

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

In the end this movie belongs to Del Toro. He imbues Jerry with such life, such ambiguity, such unsentimental complexity and depth that you can’t help but feel you’re watching the most intricately mapped depiction of addiction and strained humanity the film world has ever given us.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Emotionally challenging and honest.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Allen Loeb's first produced screenplay is an unvarnished treatment of death and its aftermath that's unusual for a Hollywood film.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Berry gives a riveting performance, but as a deeply decent man trapped in a hell of his own making, Del Toro gives the kind of career performance Berry gave in "Monster's Ball."

Empire Alan Morrison

The script is structurally similar to "21 Grams," but restrained turns and perceptive direction make this honest rather than manipulative.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The result is a film that's more credible in its building blocks than in its whole.

San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego

Outstanding in support roles are Alison Lohman, playing a friend of Jerry's, and John Carroll Lynch, playing a neighbor who befriends Jerry.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

The film also has an unexpected and rich vein of humor. John Carroll Lynch -- you might know him as Norm Gunderson of "Fargo" -- is a stitch as a neighbor of the Burkes.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie is an engrossing melodrama, and it has its heart in the right place.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The honesty outweighs the hokiness by a fair margin.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It is a testament to how well the movie is made that even the most hardened viewer might find himself tearing up at moments -- and you won't have to hate yourself in the morning.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The only downside is that Bier's vision of upper-middle-class America does not always seem authentic.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The movie makes some missteps, most of them in pacing and length, and the story veers occasionally into melodrama, but it is saved by the powerful performance of Benicio Del Toro.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Things We Lost in the Fire finds Bier at an interesting juncture, half-Dogmatic, half traditionalist.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Del Toro is the movie's force field. This is a performance you will not forget.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Bier is one of the cinema's most acute observers of intimate relations, her Scandinavian reserve muting the inherent melodrama of her material, and she draws piercing, modestly scaled performances from Duchovny, Del Toro, Alison Lohman, and John Carroll Lynch.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Well-acted yet strangely inert, Fire explores the messy human emotions of grief, but it'd be a lot more resonant if the guy everyone's mourning weren't so fatally perfect, so unforgivably superhuman.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Apart from the mobile camera and a moderately challenging time-jumping script, this is weepy women's cable-television fare of the tears-and-cuddles variety.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Susanne Bier is a bomb thrower. The explosives in the films by the Danish director are emotional and provoke torrents of tears, richly earned.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Were there such a thing as a low-carb melodrama, Things We Lost in the Fire would be it - all the tears, half the guilt.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Things are sporadically troublesome about the film. The story goes in and out of being self-consciously earnest and ponderous, a situation that numerous tight close-ups of people's eyes does nothing to help.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Mr. Del Toro is a fearless actor, and his Jerry, a heroin addict lurching toward redemption, is the heart and soul, as well as the haunted, rubbery visage, of a story of grief and loss that would be fairly lifeless without him.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A live-wire performance by Benicio Del Toro sparks an otherwise morose study of loss, addiction and catharsis.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

No matter what panache Bier adds, Things We Lost is still a TV-scaled tear-duct drama about a beautiful woman who pushes past sadness in her House & Garden home.

LA Weekly Julia Wallace

Benicio del Toro’s a squinty-eyed genius, and the only reason this film is halfway worth seeing.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

An unstable mix of a tearjerker, junkie-recovery story and odd-couple pairing. The film marks the American debut of Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier, whose European films show a strong affinity for stories of human frailties and of families unraveling.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

This movie asks us to "accept the good" in life - not a bad message. But to overpraise Things We Lost in the Fire would be to accept the mediocre.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Although neither Ms. Berry nor Mr. Del Toro can be faulted in their scenery-chewing moments, these star turns make you uncomfortably aware that they are Oscar-conscious auditions for the Big Prize. Their naked ambition subtly contaminates a movie that, despite its fine acting, has the emotional impact of a general anesthetic.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Made to win awards, and I'm here to present it with one: the Cliché of the Year honors, otherwise known as the Hackney.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Del Toro will probably get an Oscar nod for his Jerry, because the film is so full of Oscar moments, including a cold-turkey detox bit. He rumbles and shivers and screeches and bangs his head on the wall and takes a shower in his clothes. I never believed a second of it.