12 Years a Slave
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: October 18, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
96
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 57 Critic Reviews
Positive:
56
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
CineVueJoe WalshOct 27, 2016
With 12 Years a Slave, McQueen has not only created his finest work to date, but also a potential modern masterpiece. Read full review
100
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerOct 27, 2016
Ejiofor is truly incredible from start to finish. McQueen’s approach to Solomon’s struggle is seamless, eschewing onscreen titles or obvious discussions of lapsed time or virtually anything that could briefly detach a viewer from their immersion into Solomon’s real-life nightmare. Read full review
100
The Film StageChristopher SchobertOct 27, 2016
You want to see, hear, and feel slavery? Here is the system, in all its awful components. Read full review
100
ScreenCrushJordan HoffmanOct 27, 2016
12 Years a Slave is an emotional workout, but McQueen makes many remarkable choices. Read full review
100
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldOct 27, 2016
12 Years a Slave isn’t easy to watch, and it shouldn’t be; it’s one man’s tragedy, but it’s also the tragedy of countless thousands of souls beaten down, literally and metaphorically. Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallNov 7, 2013
There has never been a movie like 12 Years a Slave, which is Hollywood's shame. Miss it, and that mistake is yours. Read full review
100
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzOct 31, 2013
The acting is outstanding, the direction assured if straightforward. 12 Years a Slave is a history lesson of the best type. It’s brilliant. But, more crucially, it’s important. It’s brutal truth that demands to be seen. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 31, 2013
12 Years a Slave has some of the awkwardness and inauthenticity of a foreign-made film about the United States. The dialogue of the Washington, D.C., slave traders sounds as if it were written for "Lord of the Rings." White plantation workers speak in standard redneck cliches. And yet the ways in which this film is true are much more important than the ways it's false. Read full review
100
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanOct 31, 2013
Most nations, ours included, still tolerate some form of slavery or indentured servitude. And 12 Years shows the cruelty of denying not only someone’s freedom but his identity. Take away the essence of a human being – whether he’s in fetters or not – and you destroy him. Read full review
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonOct 31, 2013
Ultimately hopeful, but uncompromising in its commitment to exposing a tragic chapter in history. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezOct 31, 2013
One of the best things about 12 Years a Slave is that McQueen renders all the characters with the same depth and complexity as his protagonist. Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleSteve DavisOct 31, 2013
Brutal yet elegant, 12 Years a Slave is a beautifully rendered punch to the gut about the most shameful chapter in American history. Read full review
100
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottOct 31, 2013
There's something Shakespearean about it. From the case of mistaken identity (though willfully mistaken) to the formal, old-fashioned language to the tragic tone in which it is all swaddled, this is Shakespeare by way of the Deep South. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaOct 24, 2013
It speaks to the courage and resilience of one man, the savagery of many, and the potential, for both good and for ill, in us all. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 24, 2013
12 Years a Slave is to the “peculiar institution” what “Schindler’s List” was to the Holocaust: a work that, finally, asks a mainstream audience to confront the worst of what humanity can do to itself. If there’s no Oskar Schindler here, that’s partly the point. Read full review
100
Time Out LondonTom HuddlestonOct 20, 2013
What 12 Years a Slave is really interested in is creating an honest, believable experience: in culture and context, place and people, soil and skin. The result can, at times, be alienating. Read full review
100
NPRBob MondelloOct 18, 2013
It is Ejiofor — bewildered, sorely tested, morally towering — whose staggered dignity anchors the film. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyOct 17, 2013
Far from the push-button catharsis offered by most Hollywood redemption tales, the work is sober and deliberate, a mix of visceral intensity and artful design. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirOct 17, 2013
12 Years a Slave offers no false Hollywood catharsis along with its muted happy ending, because we’re not free from the curse of slavery yet. Looking at it, as it really was, is a start. Read full review
100
New York PostLou LumenickOct 17, 2013
Well-meaning films like “Lincoln’’ and “Lee Daniels’ The Butler’’ merely scratch the surface compared to the deep and painful truths laid bare by 12 Years a Slave. It’s about time, Scarlett O’Hara. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayOct 17, 2013
Intense, unflinching, bold in its simplicity and radical in its use of image, sound and staging, 12 Years a Slave in many ways is the defining epic so many have longed for to examine — if not cauterize — America’s primal wound. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 17, 2013
Unflinchingly directed by Steve McQueen, led by Ejiofor’s magnificent work, 12 Years a Slave is what we talk about when we talk about greatness in film. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranOct 17, 2013
This is impressive filmmaking, but it is not easy to take in. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierOct 17, 2013
McQueen has made a film comparable to “Schindler’s List” — art that may be hard to watch, but which is an essential look at man’s inhumanity to man. It is wrenching, but 12 Years a Slave earns its tears in a way few films ever do. Read full review
100
USA TodayClaudia PuigOct 17, 2013
The harrowing 12 Years a Slave is a mesmerizing period drama for the ages. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternOct 17, 2013
Movie audiences have never been presented with anything quite like the intertwined beauty and savagery of 12 Years a Slave. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 17, 2013
While this is very much a McQueen picture, with visual flourishes and motifs unmistakably his, the historical urgency and staggering injustice of the events keep McQueen and company utterly honest in their approach and in their collective act of imagining Solomon Northup's odyssey to hell and back. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 17, 2013
Proving himself a world-class director, McQueen basically makes slaves of us all. It hurts to watch it. You won't be able to tuck this powder keg in the corner of your mind and forget it. What we have here is a blistering, brilliant, straight-up classic. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 17, 2013
The genius of 12 Years a Slave is its insistence on banal evil, and on terror, that seeped into souls, bound bodies and reaped an enduring, terrible price. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanOct 16, 2013
It's Ejiofor's extraordinary performance that holds 12 Years a Slave together. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedOct 15, 2013
If the best films hold you in a captive vise, entertain you, keep you spellbound and teach you something at the same time, then 12 Years a Slave is outstanding — brave, courageous and unforgettable. Read full review
100
Time OutDavid FearOct 15, 2013
Though McQueen continues to work his themes of suffering and spiritual transcendence, this unflinching, unforgiving drama is not about a slave, but about slavery itself. Read full review
100
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreOct 15, 2013
McQueen and his stellar cast take us on a difficult journey, an odyssey that will make you want to avert your eyes. It is to their great credit that we don’t. Read full review
100
The New YorkerDavid DenbyOct 14, 2013
12 Years a Slave is easily the greatest feature film ever made about American slavery. Read full review
100
TimeRichard CorlissSep 14, 2013
A document that is raw, eloquent, horrifying and essential. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim RobeySep 14, 2013
Elicits from McQueen a directing job that's compellingly humble but also majestic, because his radical showmanship is turned to such precise, human purposes. Read full review
100
The GuardianPaul MacInnesSep 14, 2013
Stark, visceral and unrelenting, 12 Years a Slave is not just a great film but a necessary one. Read full review
100
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 2, 2013
Though the film brims with memorable characters, the show ultimately belongs to Ejiofor, who upholds the character’s dignity throughout. Read full review
100
IndieWireEric KohnSep 2, 2013
More than a powerful elegy, 12 Years a Slave is a mesmerizing triumph of art and polemics: McQueen turns a topic rendered distant by history into an experience that, short of living through the terrible era it depicts, makes you feel as if you've been there. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Oct 16, 2013
If there was any doubt that this is a horror movie, Hans Zimmer’s score pounds and roars with dread — the appropriate soundtrack for the madness of history. Read full review
91
The PlaylistChris WillmanSep 2, 2013
This revolving door of graphically rendered brutalities might feel like its own punishment if not for an array of astonishing performances that’s practically a one-stop Oscar-nomination shopping spree. Read full review
90
We Got This CoveredMatt DonatoOct 27, 2016
12 Years A Slave will beat you down emotionally, scene after scene, without any mercy - but that's just a testament to the brilliant direction, transformation-like performances, and unapologetic storytelling that elevates Steve McQueen's movie high above the masses. Read full review
90
SlateDana StevensOct 17, 2013
It’s the unhappiest happy ending I’ve ever seen, a moment that makes you weep not just for this one man who found his way back to freedom, but for all those men and women who never knew it in the first place. Read full review
90
The DissolveScott TobiasOct 15, 2013
[McQueen's] film is a tough, soul-sickening, uncompromising work of art that makes certain that when viewers talk about the evils of slavery, they know its full dimension. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthySep 2, 2013
Perhaps the nature of the story is such that the film can’t help but be obvious and quite melodramatic at times, but it gets better as it goes along and builds to a moving finish. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 24, 2013
12 Years a Slave is by no means light entertainment but it provides a more worthwhile cinematic experience than about 90% of what's out there and the impressions it leaves aren't easily dismissed or dispelled. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSusan WloszczynaOct 18, 2013
A somber, meditative, almost poetic film that delivers the horrors of bondage stripped down and head-on. Read full review
86
Film.comWilliam GossSep 2, 2013
Ejiofor’s tightly clenched conviction perfectly embodies hope and righteousness against all odds. He gives the best performance of his career to date, and what’s more, he gives “Slave” its bruised, beating heart with every scene. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc MohanOct 27, 2016
Telling Northrup’s story, McQueen gives a grand tour of the institutionalized sadism and astonishing inhumanity ubiquitous in the slave economy. Read full review
81
IGNMatt PatchesJan 9, 2019
Director Steve McQueen's eye is better than his sense of pacing in the nevertheless devastating drama 12 Years a Slave, featuring a standout performance from Serenity's Chiwetel Ejiofor. Read full review
80
Screen DailyTim GriersonOct 27, 2016
The broader approach to storytelling on McQueen’s part robs 12 Years A Slave of some of the precise, up-close vibrancy that was the hallmark of his earlier films. As a consequence, this new film feels a little less personal, although that criticism should not dismiss the intelligence and feeling on display. Read full review
80
Total FilmEmma DibdinJan 14, 2014
Visceral, vital and anchored by its earnest performances, this is a potent portrait of a shameful historical truth. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerJan 6, 2014
Falling between the twin pillars of the art house and prestige period flick, 12 Years A Slave is history lesson as horror film, powerful, visceral and affecting. And after years of being great in everything, Chiwetel Ejiofor shines in a lead worthy of his immense talent. Read full review
80
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekOct 15, 2013
12 Years a Slave works so hard to be noble, but it doesn't have to: Ejiofor is there to do all the heavy lifting. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 18, 2013
I wish the truly searing moments in this film were not continually counterbalanced by an overall historical-reenactment stiffness in the presentation. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinOct 14, 2013
The movie nails all this, and it’s smashingly effective as melodrama. But McQueen’s directorial voice — cold, stark, deterministic — keeps it from attaining the kind of grace that marks the voice of a true film artist. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezSep 13, 2013
Steve McQueen's film practically treats Solomon Norhtup as passive observer to a litany of horrors that exist primarily for our own education. Read full review
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