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Reviews Counted:143
Fresh:129
Rotten:14
Average Rating:7.6/10
Consensus: A typical women-in-prision film made untypical because it's based on real events.
Theatrical Release:Aug 1, 2003 Limited
Box Office: $4,685,516
Synopsis: Peter Mullen's shocking drama THE MAGDALENE SISTERS is based on real events that took place in Ireland from the 1960s until 1996 when an estimated 30,000 young women, considered by their families... [More]
Starring: Geraldine McEwan, Dorothy Duffy, Anne-Marie Duff, Eileen Walsh
Director: Peter Mullan
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A story like this one could easily succumb to outraged melodrama, but not only does Mullan keep the drama human-sized, he even leavens it with the humor that one can easily believe had to be summoned to endure such misguided and malicious treatment.
Top CriticFull of forceful, aching performances.
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A picture so powerfully harrowing, its slight shortcomings are forgettable compared to the entire film's cumulative effect. It's that searing.
A dramatic expose on the mistreatment of girls at the hands of the Catholic Church in 1960s Ireland.
Although it's heavy-handed in its emotional button-pushing, The Magdalene Sisters still manages to produce all the reactions the filmmakers want: repulsion, indignation, anger and outrage.
Mr. Mullan's fictional treatment of this subject in The Magdalene Sisters has much to commend.
Top CriticThe Magdalene Sisters is not light summer fare, but miss it at your peril: it is one of the year's best films.
Whatever value the film might have had as an exposé of social sin is undermined by its prejudicial stereotyping of every single nun and priest. Instead of a morally serious film about a corrupt institution… it becomes mere agitprop.
The film’s strength lies not in the harrowing crimes of its namesakes, but in the feisty spirit of the maltreated girls whose determination to escape their Dickensian nightmare transcends all.
Definitely one-sided, but still very powerful.
Top CriticWatching the film, you can feel years of real pain. It feels more like gothic documentary than darkly limned fancy.
Top CriticA stirring, emotionally galvanizing film, not only due to its shattering subject matter but thanks to Mullan's spot-on eye for casting and fluid, uncoercive style.
The cast is uniformly fine, particularly smiley-eyed Geraldine McEwan as the avaricious Sister Bridget, and the filmmaking haunting.
A film of haunting eloquence and justifiable fury.
Top CriticNeeds to inspire an emotion other than revulsion, and it eventually does, thanks to actress Nora-Jane Noone.
Blistering and brilliant work of true-life moral agitprop.
(It) isn't subtle... but it is passionate and angry and rousing where you might expect it to become numbing and depressing.
...burns with a righteous fury that's at once invigorating and self-defeating.
Powerful stuff, if a bit plodding and schematic.
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