All Critics (191)
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Top Critics (39)
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DVD (29)
As [Hirsch] struggles with the elements, his increasing frailty and the cinematography's increasing grandeur mesh in a way that's at once iconic and wrenching.
Hirsch, who carries the film on his increasingly emaciated shoulders, performs heroically, but there's an edge missing.
Without diminishing the deep transcendentalist yearnings of its young hero, Into the Wild builds to a climax of profound human connectedness, profound human pain.
Into the Wild takes your heart and shakes it, offering inspiration, exasperation and blunt realization in a true story of one young man's dream and nightmare.
It's a beautiful, big, sorrowful film that manages to celebrate America while reexamining what it has stood for and what it has become.
It is we who are made a little more complete for wrestling with, and watching, Penn's film.
Every once in awhile, a movie will come outta nowhere and blow your socks off.
Crafting his meditation on the men who answer the call of the wild, Sean Penn's adaptation is heavy on mood and ambiance but sadly lacking in depth, giving up on the wider comparisons to focus fully on McCandless, who may not be up to the scrutiny.
It's a bit heavy-handed, but ultimately a rewarding watch.
Even in its harrowing final moments, it reaches a spiritually transcendent pinnacle - the idea of ending one long, strange trip and plummeting into an even-greater unknown with both fear and elation. A stirring American drama of comfort and conflict.
Even Penn's more indulgent flourishes seem to enhance the film's keen feeling.
Penn's film displays a deep and abiding love for America, set against a critique of the uglier aspects that exist alongside all that the beauty.
The kind of insipid hero-worship that traps the subject in wax
Thank goodness for Eric Gautier’s miracle of cinematography that floods the screen with spectacular moments of pristine beauty and long shots ...
A long trip, but worth the wait. Paul Chambers, CNN.
Although it's been hailed by many, I found Sean Penn's film to be the tale of a megalomaniac as told by a narcissist.
I would never do what Christopher McCandless did, and yet I found Into the Wild to be incredibly inspiring.
Into The Wild has been made into a prayer of a motion picture by Sean Penn. It may not touch everybody, but those whom it does touch, it will touch deeply. It is a haunting odyssey.
Penn has managed an impressive achievement that qualifies as a great American film. [Blu-ray]
...one of the best-possible high-def disc transfers I've seen in quite a while. (Blu-ray Edition)
...it's not the character of McCandless...but the supporting cast and characters who bring the story to life.
About the only good thing this movie can offer is some nice scenery, which I don't need to watch a movie over two-hours long to see.
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