Incendiary Reviews
Film4
A promising opening and a stunning performance from Michelle Williams are not enough to rescue a film that jumps restlessly from genre to genre without doing justice to any of its individual stories.
Financial Times
Michelle Williams is a fine and versatile actor but even she has her limits and is never really convincing as a working-class Londoner struggling with guilt and grief.
Sky Movies
Bridget Jones's (Incend)Diary, Maguire is to be commended for attempting a contemporary terrorist drama, but seems more comfortable in the big-knickered North London fantasy world.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Eye for Film
If a member of cast could save a film, Michelle Williams would be the person to hire, since her central performance in this muddle of a movie is the only thing that stops it being unwatchable.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Top CriticIt ends up being a compendium of bizarre diversions, most of which are utterly surplus to the film's half-cocked desire to stick with the experience and emotions of its main character.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/6
Aspires to so much it ends up being less than the sum of its parts.
Daily Mirror [UK]
It's only Williams who gives the film any life but, in the face of these odds, even she's helpless to save it from a one-star rating.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Independent
After that, cliché piles upon cliché, interspersed with moments of wild unreality and some ill-thought out conspiracy theory. It makes you feel embarrassed for everyone involved.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
Daily Telegraph
London is bombed and contrives to be less recognisable than it's ever been on film, full of people who don't look, act or even speak like Londoners.
Teletext
Even more problematic is that the Young Woman's lover (the Ewan McGregor one) works for the Daily Express. None of this is calculated to warm your cockles.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/10
Times [UK]
The movie plunges straight down that treacherous black hole that exists between fact and fiction and the inability to replicate either.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
This is London
While individual scenes work well, the whole simply defies belief. And, because of this, the final polemic which suggests that London, constantly renewing itself, will never be defeated, simply appears hopelessly sentimental.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Daily Mail [UK]
Were it not for Williams's Oscar-quality performance, all the more remarkable for the shambolic incompetence that surrounds her, this would be a turkey.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
Guardian [UK]
A big-hearted, well-intentioned but ultimately overstretched adaptation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Filmcritic.com
a well-made film featuring good actors and which tells an intimate story, but which tries to do too much and collapses under the weight of its own aspirations
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Sun Online
A silly tale involving an unbelievably young top anti-terror cop, an unrealistic journalist, laughable imaginary letters to Bin Laden and a far-fetched friendship between the mum and the bomber's son.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
Cinematical
Williams is magnificent in her role -- though they beat the living hell out of her, to a point where it almost becomes ridiculous.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Shadows on the Wall
But it maintains its connection with us through Williams' fiercely open-hearted portrayal of a woman losing her grip on her life. And this is just emotional and offbeat enough to make the film worth a look.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Michelle William's riveting performance as the young mother makes it imminently watchable.
