All Is Lost
Lionsgate | Release Date: October 18, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 45 Critic Reviews
Positive:
41
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
EmpireChris Hewitt (1)Dec 23, 2013
A triumph of pure cinema and wonderful visual storytelling from Chandor, who must now be considered the real deal, while Redford is sublime in what could well be the performance of his career. Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallOct 31, 2013
Chandor and Redford make an illuminating procedural of Our Man's response to calamity... Our Man is everyman, revealed by beautifully filmed and edited action without exposition. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 24, 2013
All Is Lost works quite brilliantly on its most basic narrative level. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 24, 2013
It’s an expertly paced thriller that never misses a note. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayOct 24, 2013
Chandor’s attention to detail, and the expressiveness and utter believability with which Redford goes about the anything-but-mundane business of surviving, make All Is Lost a technically dazzling, emotionally absorbing, often unexpectedly beautiful experience. Read full review
100
Portland OregonianMarc MohanOct 24, 2013
The pacing is perfect, and the action, mostly filmed in a studio, is never less than utterly believable. The director’s first feature, “Margin Call,” was full of rapid-fire dialogue, and he shows off considerable range by following it up with this film. Read full review
100
SlateDana StevensOct 20, 2013
The way that Redford’s character — who for all his namelessness and near-wordlessness emerges as a distinct character, a calm, pragmatic, curious man with a dry sense of humor — struggles with that ultimate question is the beating heart of All is Lost, which somewhere in its second hour goes from being a good movie to being a great one. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comAli ArikanOct 18, 2013
Here is a formidable opus whose real spiritual relative is Tennyson's "Ulysses". Yes. All is Lost is that good. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyOct 17, 2013
All Is Lost, which is only Chandor's second film, reveals itself as remarkably skillful, surprisingly insightful and deeply moving. It's a confident work by an artist who knows himself and trusts his audience. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottOct 17, 2013
The ancient Greeks believed that character should be revealed through action. I can’t think of another film that has upheld this notion so thoroughly and thrillingly. There is certainly no other actor who can command our attention — our empathy, our loyalty, our love — with such efficiency. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternOct 17, 2013
It's a meditation on mortality, with remarkable resemblances to "Gravity," not to mention echoes of "The Old Man and the Sea." It's admirably crafted, with a wealth of detail that illustrates the sailor's resourcefulness. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaOct 17, 2013
There is incredible tension in this ordeal, this effort to survive, to find rescue, and Redford - an icon of the American film experience for more than half a century now - makes that tension deeply palpable. Read full review
100
TimeMary CorlissOct 17, 2013
In this film, however, he battles the elements and mortality with a thinking man’s resilience the equal of any astronaut, freighter captain or free man enslaved. That he fights fate on his own makes All Is Lost a signal film achievement and the capstone to a great star’s career. This is Ultimate Redford. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanOct 17, 2013
Redford will surely earn a well-deserved Oscar nomination for this role, to which he commits with unerring dedication. But the real star is writer/director Chandor, whose painstaking approach is exquisite in its spare integrity. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedOct 16, 2013
All Is Lost is movie magic on many levels but most importantly as the rare opportunity to watch a seasoned actor at the pinnacle of his power. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanOct 16, 2013
This is Robert Redford doing what too many stars should do and don't: taking a chance. And reinventing his art. It's an extraordinary thing to see. Read full review
100
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlOct 15, 2013
A genuine nail-biter, scrupulously made and fully involving, elemental in its simplicity. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua RothkopfOct 15, 2013
Redford, already a giant, has never been more suggestive. His character’s misadventure — might be a kind of cosmic penance. It’s the salvation of the moviegoing year. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloOct 16, 2013
Arguably, the performance is too single-minded to achieve real greatness, but its utter lack of showmanship is precisely what the movie requires; at its best, All Is Lost could almost be a documentary about survival at sea, though it’s more starkly elemental than even nature documentaries usually get. Read full review
91
Film.comJordan HoffmanMay 25, 2013
Chandor delivers pure cinema. Thrilling and adventuresome, this is a career highlight from the uniquely sympathetic Robert Redford. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnMay 25, 2013
The movie is an impressively realized work of minimalist storytelling that foregrounds Redford's physicality more than any other role in his celebrated career. His performance defines the movie to an almost shockingly experimental degree. Read full review
90
The DissolveKeith PhippsOct 16, 2013
It’s a classic tale of survival that draws on how movies, in the right hands, can make viewers see the world through others’ eyes, and to feel what keeps them grasping as it threatens to slip away. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinOct 14, 2013
In his late seventies, Robert Redford has never held the camera as magnificently as he does in the survival-at-sea thriller All Is Lost. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesNov 6, 2013
Audience fortitude aside: This is compulsively watchable stuff, a masterstroke of thoughtful direction and thought-provoking performance. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia PuigOct 17, 2013
In this spare, unusual and intimate action thriller, Redford's expressions do nearly all of the communicating. He is the sole human cast member and utters only one word during the entire movie, which covers a span of eight days. The ocean — super-charged and becalmed — gets equal billing. If this sounds bizarre, or like an exercise in tedium, it is neither. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 17, 2013
Redford, who can play intelligence, wit and nuance to a camera like nobody's business, holds us in his grip. It's a master class in acting. Read full review
88
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreOct 16, 2013
This solo ordeal won’t be to every taste, but All Is Lost is a grand vehicle for the actor and for that viewer ready to consider his or her own mortality, the problems, conflicts, strengths and shortcomings you’re sure you leave behind when you just sail away. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 18, 2013
If one buys into the whole grace under pressure thing, All Is Lost – the title is its own spoiler alert – is first-rate. Read full review
83
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 25, 2013
All Is Lost is a taut, superbly crafted addition to the survival story genre. Read full review
80
Total FilmKevin HarleyDec 23, 2013
With no 3D, no friends and no hope, Redford and Chandor show how survivalist instincts can stoke thrilling, thoughtful cinema. If Gravity grabbed you, hop aboard and hold tight. Read full review
80
NPRElla TaylorOct 18, 2013
All is Lost is as quiet as "Margin Call" was chatty; at a minimum, you might call this film a procedural. But like the best of the genre, its relentless focus on the material and the practical also gestures subtly at a life of the soul, however battered. Read full review
80
The New YorkerDavid DenbyOct 14, 2013
Unimaginable as anything but a movie. It’s largely wordless, sombrely spectacular, vast and intimate at the same time, with a commitment to detailed physical reality that commands amazed attention for a tight hundred minutes. Read full review
80
VarietyJustin ChangMay 25, 2013
A virtually wordless film that speaks with grave eloquence and simplicity about the human condition. Nothing here feels fancy or extraneous, least of all Redford’s superb performance. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanNov 7, 2013
The presence of Robert Redford gives the character weight, if not depth, because we bring to the film everything we know about the actor from other movies. Redford’s characters have seemed unflappable for more than 40 years: sometimes cool, sometimes cocky, but almost always master of a situation. To see him beginning to flounder is to see a new Redford, one who catches us off guard. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsNov 7, 2013
This very male and methodical movie is like the anti-“Gravity,” as the un-moored hero is quietly in control of his options and at peace with his possible failure. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyOct 25, 2013
Ultimately, your nautical mileage may vary as to whether Chandor and Redford achieve the philosophical and emotional impact they intend, but in a movie that is a demonstration of the importance of trying, they definitely try. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 24, 2013
The film is unusual not so much because of its content - the man vs. nature story has always been a popular one, whether in print or on film - but in its restraint. Putting an actor, even an accomplished one such as Redford, alone on screen for more than 90 minutes is a risk. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 24, 2013
The film has a quietly relentless quality. Redford is fully engaged and vital. I'll leave it to others to read greatness into All Is Lost. It's enough that it's good. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle SmithOct 20, 2013
The film is still a gripping experience, though, with its circling sharks, its sun-dappled beauty and its agonies of shattered hope. At one point I was convinced that Sandra Bullock would splash down next to our man in her space capsule and Hanks’ Maersk ship from “Captain Phillips” would steam by to pick up both of them. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 25, 2013
Redford, who can’t avoid exuding charisma, plays this role with utter naturalism and lack of histrionics or self-regard. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineNick SchagerOct 8, 2013
J.C. Chandor creates an austere snapshot of human struggle, ingenuity, and perseverance, one that's predicated on Robert Redford's fantastic performance. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicRandy CordovaOct 24, 2013
It feels like a filmmaker’s exercise rather than an involving motion picture. Although you may never be bored with All Is Lost, you are rarely fully engaged. Read full review
60
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 25, 2013
The film’s scope is limited, but as far as it goes, All Is Lost is very good indeed: a neat idea, very nimbly executed. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 25, 2013
Redford delivers a tour de force performance: holding the screen effortlessly with no acting support whatsoever. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezNov 7, 2013
All is Lost is more fun to think about than it is to actually watch: It’s a testament to a great actor, an experimental piece of cinema and a bit of a bore. Read full review
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