Boy A Reviews
Cinematical
Even though the film is a narrative disappointment, it is possibly of interest for Garfield's performance.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Slant Magazine
For all its sensitivity, thoughtful sobriety, and sound performances, though, Boy A finally permits itself an excessive number of contrived and/or clichéd gestures.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Top Critic
We're introduced to more string-pulling symbolism than a movie this inherently sad ever needs. It's too much.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
New York Press
Boy A is so excessively mannered that the story's human element (misunderstood youth, society's indifference) is lost.
Mullen and Garfield fit well together -- both have faces you like on first sight, both have charm, both have warmth.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Although the screenplay tips our sympathies wholly in the young man's direction, it's cleverly structured to reveal the particulars of the long-ago crime, and what led up to it, in flashback.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A small, huge film about the harsh realities of rehabilitation, and the shimmering possibility of redemption.
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Garfield is definitely an actor to watch, but prepare yourself for the disappointing ending.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Film Journal International
...Garfield presents an indelible portrait of a young man trying to figure out how to continue his life in the face of haunting secrets and a world that doesn't want to let him forget it.
EricDSnider.com
It's a sad movie, no question -- but like most great drama, it inspires admiration for its thoughtfulness and its craft.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
Paste Magazine
Taken as the meditation on the past that it is, Boy A is a moving look at the best and worst of how humans can treat one another.
Carefully calibrated to explore the solitariness of a character who cannot let himself be known ... Turns Boy A's very particular story into a scary, universal and wrenching social statement.
Full Review
| Original Score: 8/10
Sin Magazine
This is a brutally honest story that pulls no punches. It excels at everything from the directing and acting to the editing and photography. A stunning achievement
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Director John Crowley, a veteran Irish theater director now working in film, is deliberate with every last element of his film.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
If Hitchcock had done a coming-of-age drama, it might have resembled this haunting, nervous, sad movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
