Clemency
Neon | Release Date: December 27, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
77
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
29
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Chandler LevackJan 16, 2020
This is a film with an unforgettable story and performances that will edge into your DNA. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comMatt FagerholmDec 27, 2019
This is screen acting of a very rare sort, and Clemency is a vital emotional powerhouse sorely deserving of being seen. Read full review
90
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 27, 2019
If you want to see what great acting is, watch Alfre Woodard deliver a master class in Clemency. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrJan 16, 2020
Clemency observes its characters with a steady, unmodulated pace and a minimum of frills. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubRoxana HadadiDec 19, 2019
Alfre Woodard captures with exquisite nuance the emotional and physical toll it might take on someone, spending years overseeing executions; she grounds the film, which otherwise strikes a balance between broad empathy and a pointed call for criminal justice reform. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnFeb 1, 2019
Chukwu maintains an impressive command over her material, but Woodard herself becomes the movie’s central storyteller. Read full review
80
Little White LiesRogan GrahamFeb 14, 2022
Chukwu is a master of show don’t tell, and the deft emotional performances she elicits from Woodard and Hodge make this heavy experience completely worth it. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenAug 24, 2020
It’s Woodard’s film from start to finish. She’s been great for three decades, but this is her best work yet. Read full review
80
CineVueChristopher MachellJul 16, 2020
Chinonye Chukwu’s Clemency is a sombre, layered study of the human cost of capital punishment. One of this era’s most powerful actors, Alfre Woodard, leads with one of her best, most understated performances yet. Read full review
80
EmpirePamela HutchinsonJul 15, 2020
Alfre Woodard gives an unforgettably moving performance in Chinonye Chukwu’s slow-burning, perfectly observed drama about the repercussions of state-sanctioned violence, in which the stakes could hardly be higher. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Angelica Jade BastienJan 18, 2020
Above all else, Clemency is a supreme actors’ showcase, backed by a director of fine-tuned emotional intelligence and a cinematographer who understands the depth and beauty of black skin tones. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 16, 2020
Clemency isn’t exactly a good time at the movies, but it’s definitely an enlightening one. Read full review
80
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpJan 3, 2020
The strength of ensemble’s performances can’t be overstated, especially that of Woodard and Hodge—she one of the greatest actors of her generation, he on the path to becoming one of the greats of his own. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJan 3, 2020
Clemency is a meditation on capital punishment from a singular perspective. Call it Dead Warden Walking. Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 26, 2019
Woodard’s performance gathers its astonishing force incrementally, in subtle choices and inflections that you might not even register as actorly decisions. Read full review
80
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 26, 2019
There’s little room to breathe in writer-director Chinonye Chukwu’s constricting, devastating drama Clemency, an intentionally airless film processing a tough subject through an unusual viewpoint. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyFeb 1, 2019
It's the humanity and compassion invested across all the principal characters that makes this contemplative examination of the terrible weight of taking a life so commanding. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangFeb 1, 2019
It’s a sterling piece of American realism, powered by the transfixing spectacle of a great actor at the peak of her powers. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiJan 22, 2020
This is Woodard’s show, and her Bernadine is mesmerizing as she navigates her life of meting out justice while grappling with the price of it. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJan 22, 2020
Clemency is slow and without much suspense. The real question isn’t whether this person or that person will be executed, but whether Bernardine will go to pieces, and yet with a performance like Woodard’s at the center, that’s all a movie needs. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiam LaceyJan 22, 2020
Reservations aside, Clemency has moments of shivering gravity. Almost all of them involve complex emotions registered in Woodard’s extraordinary face, her dignified resistance to a turmoil of emotions within her, and her agonized need for forgiveness. Read full review
75
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanJan 8, 2020
Clemency, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, isn’t really a death row drama in the same way that “Just Mercy” is. Rather, it’s a character study of a witness who, vicariously, is a stand-in for each of us. Read full review
75
New York PostSara StewartDec 26, 2019
Clemency is remarkable for the understanding it affords to all involved with its wrenching subject matter. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattDec 26, 2019
Clemency does what few other movies about death row have, handling a thorny, infinitely complicated subject in terms that are neither moralizing nor melodramatic. And Chukwu’s clean-lined storytelling has an undeniable pull; something quietly incandescent at the center. In the end though, it’s hard not to wish that she’d let a little more light in. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineChuck BowenDec 17, 2019
Chinonye Chukwu’s film is a morality play with a true sense of contradiction and melancholia. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 14, 2019
In Woodard’s stillness is a singularly great performance from a career decorated with them. Read full review
75
The Film StageJordan RaupFeb 4, 2019
Clemency is a thoroughly draining experience as if we’re placed in purgatory with no means of escape, but it’s ultimately powerful in the ways it shows how the death penalty has consequences for everyone involved. Read full review
70
Film ThreatNorman GidneyFeb 4, 2019
Clemency is a staggering achievement in its portrayal of a story that we often ignore out of simple spite or ignorance that humanizes all angles with compassion. Read full review
70
VarietyAmy NicholsonFeb 1, 2019
If Woodard is hoping for her overdue second Oscar nomination after 1983’s “Cross Creek,” she’s got a decent shot with this excruciating character arc. Yet, the actress is even better in the scenes where Bernadine simply gets drunk, even if she still can’t talk about anything but work. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony LaneJan 6, 2020
The movie’s energies drop perceptibly in the middle section; lines of dialogue are recited at a sluggish rate, with lengthy pauses, as if the pressure of the presiding theme had numbed the characters’ tongues. Read full review
58
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodFeb 1, 2019
Alfre Woodard may have graced us with the performance of her career. Read full review
50
TheWrapCandice FrederickDec 23, 2019
Clemency is a film that is just almost great. The level of restraint Chukwu has in her writing and execution, while admirable, is the very thing that prevents it from truly soaring. Read full review
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