The Messenger Reviews
7M Pictures
I know several folks in military service who wouldn't watch this movie if you paid them.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Uruguay Total
Alejado de cualquier rastro de patriotismo, desnudando la complejidad emocional detrás de un drama históricamente recurrente que ha sido retratado con frecuencia por el cine norteamericano, aunque esta vez de manera un poco más intimista.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Digital Spy
It never feels contrived or overwritten, managing to deftly pack emotional punches through the strength of its performances and direction.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Birmingham Post
It's a shame so few people will see this on the silver screen.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Observer [UK]
The Messenger takes on a warmth and plangency that rewards viewing.
Daily Mirror [UK]
Don't let the fact Woody Harrelson got an Oscar nomination tempt you anywhere near The Messenger - the message here is about as welcome as a death knock on a wet Sunday afternoon.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Movie Talk
An intelligent, superbly acted and moving drama that manages to say more about war and its consequences than most films set on the front line.
Daily Express
Although it stumbles on the storytelling, drifting rather repetitively around the lives of its haunted protagonists, it's a rewarding, humane picture.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Daily Express
Foster and an Oscar-nominated Harrelson effectively convey the outward steel and inner fragility of these men of war but the film is slow-moving and maudlin.
Guardian [UK]
An intelligent and well-acted film which deserves its outing here.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Daily Telegraph
It's a film of quietly assured dramatic clout, a strong and sober reckoning with American conscience.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Little White Lies
Stumbles a little, loosening its grip in the bromantic final stretch. But if impenitent heartstring pluckage is what you're after, this is where it's at.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Radio Times
This worthwhile drama reports from the home front as the war on terror continues.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Financial Times
The Oscar-nominated script pursues a grimly honourable task into its grim and not always honourable byways.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
The Skinny
Intimate, powerful filmmaking.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Sky Movies
It's a welcome addition to the increasingly interesting movie canon dealing with the downside of the war.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Top Critic[An] unpredictable, episodic, deeply resonant character piece.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Real.com
A powerhouse performance full of tragic comic undertones while looking at the psychological effects of war in an original storytelling manner...
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Empire Magazine
A worthy addition to the canon of Iraq war films, The Messenger has a gentle humanity that creeps under your skin.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
News of the World
Shame nobody told writer-director Oren Moverman not to shoot The Messenger... before giving the script a good rewrite first.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
