Short Life of Jose Antonio Guiterrez Reviews
Paste Magazine
With honesty and respect, Heidi Specogna has made neither a shallow tribute nor a polemic. She's made a great film about America.
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| Original Score: 4.5/5
Top CriticWhile never letting its tone of studious but stewing detachment slip, the movie quietly builds a truly enraging case for a certain form of systematic official cynicism.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Jam! Movies
The Short Life of Jose Antonio Gutierrez is a film with a moral and political message about immigration and the people who are used as cannon fodder by the United States.
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| Original Score: 4/5
The link between the illegal immigrant problems in the United States and the war in Iraq is explored in the moving documentary The Short Life of Jose Antonio Gutierrez.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Film Journal International
Dispels any remaining myth about the "compassionate" side of that supposed compassionate conservative, George W. Bush.
Although Ms. Specogna's film fleshes out his life to the extent that it can, the portrait remains frustratingly incomplete. But given its larger subject - a young life trampled beneath history's forward march - this seems entirely fitting.
Comment | Original Score: 3/5
Now, more than ever, it should be seen here in the U.S. for its ironies, both implicit and explicit.
With only a few letters and family photos, director Heidi Specogna never brings her subject to life.
eye WEEKLY
It's impossible not to think of the many other 'green-card soldiers' -- desperate Latin Americans offered breaks on permanent resident status in exchange for military enlistment -- who've paid the highest price for a shot at a better life.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Slant Magazine
The life and death of the first American soldier killed in Iraq complicates the ongoing debate on illegal immigration.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Film Threat
The Short Life... is one of those docs that takes the life of an individual and surrounds it with other people's stories that are just as absorbing.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
Heidi Specogna's The Short Life of Jose Antonio Gutierrez sensitively and methodically tells the story of the first U.S. soldier killed in the 2003 Iraq invasion.
