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Crude (2009)

tomatometer

95

Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 64
Fresh: 61 | Rotten: 3

Dynamic, tightly arranged, and deliberately provocative, Joe Berlinger's Crude is a sobering, enraging wake-up call.

100

Average Rating: 7.9/10
Critic Reviews: 17
Fresh: 17 | Rotten: 0

Dynamic, tightly arranged, and deliberately provocative, Joe Berlinger's Crude is a sobering, enraging wake-up call.

audience

85

liked it
Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 1,245

My Rating

Movie Info

The story behind the world's largest oil-related environmental lawsuit comes to the screen as award-winning documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) investigates the facts in the case of the so-called "Amazon Chernobyl," a disaster that occurred deep in the rain forests of Ecuador. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Unrated, 1 hr. 40 min.

Documentary, Special Interest

Feb 23, 2010

$0.2M

First Run Features

All Critics (64) | Top Critics (17) | Fresh (62) | Rotten (3) | DVD (1)

An engrossing case for justice.

December 3, 2009 Full Review Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A gripping, multifaceted thriller about media politics, global economics, and legal infighting. Wherever your sympathies fall, this may teach you a lot about the way the modern world works.

December 3, 2009 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comment
Chicago Reader
Top Critic IconTop Critic

One has to wonder if oil industry executives are concerned about the release of Joe Berlinger's damning documentary.

December 3, 2009 Full Review Source: New York Daily News | Comment
New York Daily News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

What Crude does best is take us behind the scenes and show in often candid detail how campaigns are waged, tactics decided on and strategies prioritized.

December 3, 2009 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times | Comment
Los Angeles Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

As the film very eloquently implies, when the greater good is defined as profits, and a lack of culpability is proportionate to your number of shareholders, well . . . a lot of petroleum-soaked chickens will be coming home to roost.

December 2, 2009 Full Review Source: Washington Post | Comment
Washington Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

At first Crude looks like one more environmental agit-doc intended to outrage and inspire. Director Joe Berlinger is no doctrinaire hack, though.

November 5, 2009 Full Review Source: Boston Globe | Comment
Boston Globe
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Another interesting film from Joe Berlinger

August 17, 2011 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | Comment

In a welcome change from many recent documentaries with an activist bent, the director is never seen on camera, never heard on the soundtrack, and does precious little overt editorializing.

July 4, 2010 Full Review Source: DCist | Comment

troubling, enlightening, joyous, and thought-provoking in the best sense of that phrase

March 8, 2010 Full Review Source: Killer Movie Reviews | Comment
Killer Movie Reviews

This intense documentary tells a hugely important story that's packed with compelling characters and situations. Although a repetitive structure and a sense of agonising futility conspire to undermine the vital lessons it has to teach us.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Shadows on the Wall | Comment
Shadows on the Wall

Not exactly genre-bending innovation or anything but a decent documentary about an important episode in history of oil company exploitation.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | Comment
Empire Magazine

A bleak, necessarily incomplete tale, and suffers from a late intrusion by celebrity eco-botherer Trudi Styler. But with this gripping, angry film, Berlinger has put himself back on the side of the angels.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Time Out | Comment

Although the real-life outcome may be known to some, Crude still, at its best, unfolds like a courtroom thriller.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Times [UK] | Comment
Times [UK]

The Ecuadorians' fight continues, and their courage isn't to be doubted. Even the much-mocked, much-maligned campaigner Trudie Styler emerges with credit for supporting them.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Guardian [UK] | Comment
Guardian [UK]

Structurally a little jumbled, it's still a worthy addition to the angry eco-doc subgenre.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Daily Telegraph | Comment
Daily Telegraph

Gripping and powerful, Crude is documentary journalism as it needs to be. Blissful ignorance stirred with bland apathy is no longer an option.

January 15, 2010 Comment
Little White Lies

There's much speechifying, with no high-octane finale - but that's near-unavoidable for a case still dragging on amid corrupt politicking.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Total Film | Comment
Total Film

Berlinger's purpose is not to cheerlead or show Fajardo rubbing shoulders with celebrity activists like Trudie Styler and Sting, but to highlight how easily money can tilt the scales of justice.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Radio Times | Comment
Radio Times

While the current trend in documentaries is to take stories and wrap them into neat little packages, Crude runs merrily against the grain.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Daily Mirror [UK] | Comment
Daily Mirror [UK]

Few of these films ever take solid, substantive slices of truth or attestation from both sides. They are always partial, which vitiates the eagerness with which we would, if we could, espouse the cause of downtrodden.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Financial Times | Comment (1)
Financial Times

Joe Berlinger's film is a suitably forensic dissection of an ecological disaster and much less of a crusading piece of polemic than documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Independent | Comment
Independent

The arguments are batted back and forth, and one's sympathy for the Ecuadorean side takes only a slight wobble when Trudi Styler gets behind the cause.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Independent | Comment
Independent

A well-balanced documentary all the more incisive for its decision to eschew editorialising and let the evidence speak for itself.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Daily Express | Comment
Daily Express

A sturdy, hard-hitting account.

January 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Scotsman | Comment

A powerfully emotional documentary that grips like an expert legal thriller - by turns uplifting, suspenseful and utterly devastating, this is likely to be one of the best documentaries of the year.

January 14, 2010 Full Review Source: ViewLondon | Comment
ViewLondon
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Crude

"Crude" is a documentary about a class action suit brought by the indigenous populations of Ecuador against Chevron(who merged with Texaco and assumed their past liabilities including this one), seeking damages for the dumping of wastes which has destroyed waterways which are the lifeblood of the country. As a result,

January 28, 2011
Harlequin68
Walter M.

Super Reviewer

My personal favorite straight documentary for several reasons; its subject and the filmmakers passion and levelheadedness. While there is a clear narrative complete with clear villains and victims, the makers of this movie aren't beyond acknowledging the difficulty of the situation.

October 19, 2010
bkrauser
Brian Krause

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September 10, 2009:
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Foreign Titles

  • Crudo : pétrole brut (FR)
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