Woman Walks Ahead
Batrax Entertainment | Release Date: June 29, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
51
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 19 Critic Reviews
Positive:
6
Mixed:
12
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
IGNKenneth Seward Jr.Jul 26, 2018
Woman Walks Ahead has some narrative issues but is ultimately a well-acted biographical drama. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattJul 6, 2018
Woman could use some of the quieter character nuance of a movie like last year’s "Wind River," another fact-based drama that reflected the struggle of indigenous people with a sensitive, unvarnished kind of naturalism; White’s well-meant version is undoubtedly incomplete, and gilded with a certain amount of Hollywood silliness. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedJun 29, 2018
Strongly acted, beautifully shot and sincerely aimed at clearing up some of the misconceptions about the Old West that have been passed off as history by Hollywood movies. Read full review
75
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthApr 24, 2018
It’s the kind of smoothly rounded, edgeless historical drama that’s built for maximum appeal, with a broad perspective and an easy to digest tone. Well-crafted and ably told, this is a film that’s wholly respectable though not particularly memorable, but still manages to connect with its earnest good intentions and desire to please. Read full review
70
Screen DailyAllan HunterApr 24, 2018
Woman Walks Ahead is a story of defying expectations, finding common ground and gaining knowledge. Read full review
63
New York PostSara StewartJun 28, 2018
More wobbly moments of Woman Walks Ahead seem to teeter on the edge of both white-saviorism and becoming a Harlequin romance. Read full review
60
Time OutTomris LafflyJul 26, 2018
The resolute Greyeyes and the always-brilliant Chastain chart their respective characters with real chemistry, and White captures the pair’s brewing romantic tension. For underscoring the brief but beautiful optimism of two ill-fated outliers, her woman comes out ahead. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJul 2, 2018
The movie’s most exciting moment comes when Weldon realizes that she has been played — that in helping turn the tribes against the Dawes Act, she has won the battle and lost the war, since the U.S. would now have cause to attack. That’s the moment when Woman Walks Ahead should get really good but turns, instead, into a weeper. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawApr 24, 2018
Woman Walks Ahead is a solidly crafted and well shot, if basically unchallenging film. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeJun 28, 2018
Despite the sensitivity of its storytelling, and Chastain’s career-defining passion for playing headstrong, independent women like Mrs. Weldon, it also never really comes to life. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversJul 5, 2018
It’s the sort true-story premise would be a fascinating starting point for a movie … if said film had more than a nodding acquaintance with the truth. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comSusan WloszczynaJun 29, 2018
Clumsily conflates our country’s racist genocide of Native Americans with the era’s marginalizing of women and their lack of rights. Read full review
50
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlJun 28, 2018
The good intentions it carries out to the plains don’t make up for the tentative falseness at its center, a hero who could herself benefit from a portraitist’s clear vision. Read full review
50
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisJun 28, 2018
It’s all ridiculously romanticized and self-serving. But the performances are so good (Mr. Greyeyes, in particular, is a miracle of intelligence and dignity) and Michael Eley’s vistas, shimmeringly shot in New Mexico, are so stunning, it feels churlish to resist. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeApr 24, 2018
Woman Walks Ahead offers dimension to its leading lady, but holds its Native characters to the same old surface stereotypes. Such a movie is a step in the right direction, but farther behind than it seems to realize. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyApr 24, 2018
Despite the estimable talent on hand both behind and in front of the camera, the story never comes to convincing life and doesn’t, in the end, have anywhere particularly surprising or interesting to go. Read full review
42
IndieWireDavid EhrlichApr 24, 2018
The film suffers enormously from its slippery grasp of history, all of its narrative thrust slipping through the cracks between fact and fiction. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangJun 28, 2018
Deviations from the historical record aren’t a problem in and of themselves; it’s what those deviations add up to (or don’t), and what they say about the motivations of the artists behind them. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineChuck BowenJun 25, 2018
As a character, Catherine Weldon suffers the same fate as Sitting Bull, having been reduced to a signifier of the filmmakers' retroactive political correctness. Read full review
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