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Winslow Boy, The
Sony Pictures Classics


8.7

based on 28 reviews
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based on 4 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: G for General Audiences

Starring Nigel Hawthorne, Jeremy Northam, Rebecca Pidgeon, Gemma Jones, Matthew Pidgeon, Lana Bilzerian, Sarah Flind, and Aden Gillett

Set in 1910, The Winslow Boy is based on a real-life story of a young cadet who is accused of stealing a five-shilling postal note. As his case proceeds, it challenges many long accepted legal notions and sets off a national frenzy, exacting a heavy price on the family that takes on his defense. (Sony Pictures Classics)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	David Mamet Terence Rattigan (play)
DIRECTED BY:	David Mamet
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 1, 2000 Video: August 15, 2000 Theatrical: April 30, 1999
RUNNING TIME:	104 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

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...

100

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

This is the kind of movie that literate viewers pine for, laced with gracefulness and wit.

Entertainment Weekly Staff (not credited)

This genteel period piece invites a typically Mametian tension between its characters' stylized manners and their underlying motivations.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

He doesn't lose his stylistic identity either: in addition to the very Mamet-like delivery of unfinished sentences, his command of rhythm and flow remains flawless throughout.

Dallas Observer Jean Oppenheimer

This engaging film proves a total pleasure, suitable for moviegoers who like their films a bit old-fashioned but still mainstream.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

If The Winslow Boy has a flaw, it's that Mamet's style is impeccable to a fault, too cool and remote to have much of an emotional payoff. But since few directors can even approach his level of precision, that's a very minor complaint.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Mamet's graceful, reverent movie adaptation moves along with a deliberating, almost hypnotic flow, strengthened by impeccable, dignified performances from Nigel Hawthorne, Rebecca Pidgeon and others.

Newsweek Andrea C. Basora

The result is a film of rare restraint and surprising power.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Hell has not yet frozen over, but here's something equally unexpected: David Mamet has made a G-rated movie for adults.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Sixty seconds of wondering if someone is about to kiss you is more entertaining than 60 minutes of kissing. By understanding that, Mamet is able to deliver a G-rated film that is largely about adult sexuality.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The result is a rare treat, a revival of a period piece that doesn't descend into mere quaintness or prettiness, and that manages to capture the spirit of an earlier time without sacrificing the perspective of our own.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

Mamet's handsome, stately adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play The Winslow Boy does not embellish upon its source material. Instead it skillfully pares the play down to its essentials, arriving at a faithful but tighter version of this drama.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Mamet's real triumph, however, is in his directing. Like every good director, he has "seen" the picture before he made it; and he saw it as a piece with the intimacy and physicality of a play that nonetheless flowed like cinema.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Genteel moviemaking with modern overtones, The Winslow Boy is especially good at the visual re-creation of its time.

Slate David Edelstein

Beat by beat, Mamet turns out an immaculately staged, crisply paced, and elegantly acted movie. It's also a tad bloodless, but you can't have everything.

LA Weekly John Patterson

What's left is "Masterpiece Theatre," a very clean, straightforward adaptation of a beautifully constructed play, faithful to a dead man's classical virtues -- harmony, proportion, balance -- if not to the director's own, more iconoclastic ones.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Mamet's dialogue is still on the mark, rapid-fire, and as cutting as an antique straight razor.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

At once a stifling exercise in thwarting emotional dynamics and a heated invitation to engage in the film's discourse on the shortcoming of sexual politics and justice in a media-saturated land.

Chicago Tribune John Petrakis

A pleasure to watch and also serves as a reminder of a time when "right over might" was at the core of a powerful country's credo. [28 May 1999, Tempo, p.5]

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Mamet illustrates that he can work as capably from someone else's script as he can from his own, and that his talent as a director is not eclipsed by his ability as a writer.

USA Today Mike Clark

In the movie's high point, (Jeremy) Northam conducts an antagonistic interview with the boy, who eludes well-placed lawyerly traps.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

A study in unexpressed emotion, but Mamet turns the flame so low that his film lacks the emotional payoff we expect.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

The case is tried off-screen. Thank goodness for the maid (Sarah Flind), who runs home from her chores with tidings from the outside world -- we hear from the maid that Sir Bobby gave a helluva final argument. The jurors wept, the crowd went wild. Too bad we missed it.

Variety Dennis Harvey

Very English, very period and very polite.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Mamet doesn't take the material as far as it can go -- we're left with a pleasing fable about the battle of the sexes and the virtues of persistence in a just cause. The neatness of it all is both appealing and appalling, and perhaps this combo is what finally hooked Mamet.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

This film is solidly built, faithful to its material, and utterly lacking in pretense, but its maker is still running in place.

The New Yorker David Denby

David Mamet has adapted and directed Terence Rattigan's 1946 play, which was based on a true story, with a fidelity so profound that one doesn't know whether to be amazed or depressed by it.

Film Threat Allen White

Mamet loves to cast his current wives in lead roles -- Whatever you may feel about Mamet's writing, he has an uncanny knack for marrying mediocre actresses.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Handsomely appointed and faultlessly acted, but no more alive than a well-dressed corpse.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.7 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chad S. gave it a 6:
For the same reason Martin Scorsese's take on Edith Wharton disappointed me, David Mamet's "The Winslow Boy", while admirably atypical of the celebrated playwright's filmography, like Scorsese, you miss the lowlifes, the profanity spoken by the lowlifes, and frankly, the twentieth century where the lowlifes scheme and practice theivery. "The Winslow Boy" is probably a film best appreciated by those who knew Mamet's name before his debut feature "House of Games". This is probably a great film, but costumed British period-pieces are not easy for me to sit through. What's next? Michael Mann's "Hedda Gabler"?

Pat C. gave it a 9:
A dry meaningful movie with no frills. It's about taking a stand whatever the cost, and the unattractiveness of being a hero. The framework of a family in chaos is so well established that it seems unlikely life will turn into a fairy tale existence at the end, as is implied.

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Winslow Boy, The Sony Pictures Classics

Winslow Boy, The
Sony Pictures Classics