80
Metascore
31 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Portland OregonianShawn LevyPortland OregonianShawn LevyThe result is a film that outrages and fills the viewer with poetry that's at once epic and intimate, scandalizing and life-affirming -- a real work of art.
- 100TimeRichard CorlissTimeRichard CorlissThis is a chase movie (Simon Legree after three Little Evas) across parched outback terrain, captured with rapturous authenticity by cinematographer Christopher Doyle.
- 83Seattle Post-IntelligencerPaula NechakSeattle Post-IntelligencerPaula NechakNoyce's movie is a testament to endurance -- the camera caresses the landscape -- instilling us with a respect and reverence for it, its harsh ways and the attachment to it that Australia's indigenous people hold.
- 80L.A. WeeklyElla TaylorL.A. WeeklyElla TaylorNoyce wants us to feel the joy of the homecoming, but he's honest enough to show, in a coda that tells what happened to the girls after their break for home, how Rabbit Proof Fence finally must be more a tale of courage than of victory.
- 80The New York TimesStephen HoldenThe New York TimesStephen HoldenAlthough the movie, adapted from a book by Doris Pilkington Garimara, pushes emotional buttons and simplifies its true story to give it the clean narrative sweep of an extended folk ballad, it never goes dramatically overboard.
- 80VarietyDavid StrattonVarietyDavid StrattonIt succeeds emotionally in the cause of what seems to be its primary aim, to advance an attitudinal change in Australians not normally sympathetic to the aboriginal cause.
- 75New York PostLou LumenickNew York PostLou LumenickNoyce paces this amazing story well, and even if his young actors don't seem to have physically suffered as much as they would during such a long journey, he makes extremely good use of the bleak Outback scenery.
- 63The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyThe Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyNot until the final shot does Noyce rise up to the potential of the history: There's a sudden shiver of recognition, that, my God, these people really lived this.
- 50Film ThreatPhil HallFilm ThreatPhil HallAchieves the impossible by taking one of the most compelling and harrowing stories imaginable and channeling it into one of the most ordinary movies of the year.