Dead Man Walking Reviews
Top Critic
Tim Robbins's balanced yet uncompromising approach refuses to judge any of the characters, including the killer (superlatively played by Sean Penn), instead giving each a fair chance to present their case with dignity and respect.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
An intelligent, balanced, devastating movie.
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Takes us along on the reluctant, difficult, essentially spiritual journey these two unlikely people make together.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Dead Man Walking could easily be manipulative or exploitative, but it's neither. Instead, this is hard-hitting drama that neither accepts nor offers quarter.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
A thought-provoking drama not to be missed or dismissed.
Robbins, who also wrote the script, is no Truman Capote, let alone a Victor Hugo, and his film trips up constantly on indecisiveness about what it is he's trying to say.
It will send you home with more than a few long thoughts.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
is the finest, least compromised film about capital punishment ever advancing a gently stated 'anti' view but going the extra 100 miles to give victims their due.
| Original Score: 4/4
Absorbing, surprising, technically superb and worth talking about for a long time afterward
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Robbins and Susan Sarandon, have crafted a film that transcends its own political message by a scrupulous attention to detail.
Don't go unadvised, and don't plan anything too frivolous for right afterwards. But do go.
Its objectivity is what makes it so controversial and fascinating.
Penn gives an astonishing performance and delivers exactly what Dead Man Walking needs.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Sarandon, who won the Oscar for Best Actress for this role, is superb, but Penn is extraordinary.
Its final moments leave us awash in emotion.
| Original Score: 4.5/5
