Ash Wednesday (2002)
Average Rating: 4/10
Reviews Counted: 15
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 11
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 4.6/10
Critic Reviews: 5
Fresh: 1 | Rotten: 4
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 2,900
My Rating
Movie Info
Two brothers in 1980s New York struggle to escape pasts entangled in Irish vs. Italian gang warfare.
Oct 11, 2002 Wide
Feb 18, 2003
IFC Films
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All Critics (18) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (4) | Rotten (11) | DVD (4)
With more swagger than Saint Pat on Snake Day, Edward Burns struts around 1983 Hell's Kitchen in search of a Sopranos audition.
Top CriticAn ambitious, guilt-suffused melodrama crippled by poor casting.
This time Mr. Burns is trying something in the Martin Scorsese street-realist mode, but his self-regarding sentimentality trips him up again.
For all its brooding quality, Ash Wednesday is suspenseful and ultimately unpredictable, with a sterling ensemble cast.
Despite the authenticity of the trappings, the film is overblown in its plotting, hackneyed in its dialogue and anachronistic in its style.
...unlike [Scorsese's Mean Streets], Ash Wednesday is essentially devoid of interesting characters or even a halfway intriguing plot.
Ash Wednesday is not Edward Burns' best film, but it is a good and ambitious film. And it marks him as one of the most interesting writer/directors working today.
Burns' fifth beer-soaked film feels in almost every possible way -- from the writing and direction to the soggy performances -- tossed off.
We don't see much box-office green in this film's future.
This may be Burns's strongest film since The Brothers McMullen.
There ought to be a directing license, so that Ed Burns can have his revoked.
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