A Better Life Reviews
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Well-acted, but quite over-hyped -- a melodramatic Mexican-American version of "Bicycle Thieves."
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
NECN
A Better Life is a half-step removed from the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
A Better Life's sense of place and eye for detail are strong, but the too-smooth style and rushed dramatics are at odds with the hardscrabble existence on display.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
Flick Filosopher
[A] gentle, honest, heartfelt film, but [it] does not have much to offer beyond an earnest respect for a segment of American society that is too often derided...
Cinema Writer
The silver lining is an excellent lead performance from Bichir.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Three Movie Buffs
A well deserved Oscar nomination for Demian Bichir in a film with echoes of The Bicycle Thief.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Film and Felt
Each sequence plays out in mind-numbingly cliched fashion: father-son lectures, chin-up resilience-especially the final shot-and a stern message about the heartless anti-immigration movement are depicted in an infuriatingly shallow manner.
Full Review
| Original Score: 32/100
JWR
Director Chris Weitz has done a credible job of bringing Roger Simon's story and Eric Eason's screenplay to cinematic life.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
7M Pictures
it's far too predictable and mundane to carry my interest through the rest of the film
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Laramie Movie Scope
Although the structure of the film is conventional, the ending of the film is not. Unlike most films, it does have a real hero, Carlos.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
A sympathetic tale about an illegal Mexican.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
Essentially a variation on Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief, but it has a vitality and resonance all its own.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Scotsman
Modest as A Better Life may be in scope, it commits wholeheartedly to achieving the goal of socially conscious cinema: to make visible the previously unseen.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Film4
A movingly simple and simply moving father-son drama set in downtown LA, refreshingly free of pretentious narrative pyrotechnics. Have a hankie up your sleeve and hang your cynicism up at the door.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Daily Express
The sentimental saga of a father and son's stoical struggle against impossible odds.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Observer [UK]
It's a small, convincing, tightly constructed movie about an urgent, seemingly insoluble problem.
Daily Mirror [UK]
A compassionate, sensitive look at the precarious lives of those off the grid.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
This is London
It speaks well enough about the fate of immigrants everywhere, especially those who want to work hard but end up being exploited.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
ViewLondon
Emotionally engaging immigrant drama enlivened by strong performances from its two leads, but it's slightly undone by an overly predictable script that prevents any real surprises.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Guardian [UK]
Bichir carries it all with a measured performance of considerable emotion as the dad, clenched by so many years holding his breath, waiting for the knock at the door.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
