Revolutionary Road (2008)

All Critics (200) | Top Critics (40) | Fresh (139) | Rotten (66) | DVD (10)

Mendes has made a troubling film that wrestles with big themes and touchy subjects, even if it is set in an overly familiar milieu.

August 23, 2010 Full Review

Roger Moore

Orlando Sentinel

Top Critic

Bolstered by Thomas Newman's score, spot-on set design and the brilliant source material, "Revolutionary Road" is a darkly effective portrait of an Eisenhower-era couple who fall tragically short of reaching Camelot.

February 8, 2009 Full Review

Richard Roeper

Richard Roeper.com

Top Critic

This is a sobering, well-observed film that doesn't fully hit the mark but sets up enough pleasing ideas to chew on regarding ambition, marriage and ideals of how to live one's life, individually and as a couple.

January 30, 2009 Full Review

Dave Calhoun

Time Out

Top Critic

If Revolutionary Road had been filmed back in 1961, when the novel came out, it would have been timely and powerful.

January 24, 2009 Full Review | Comments (3)

Jonathan F. Richards

Film.com

Top Critic

Bitter, nerve-wracking, ugly and relentless, Revolutionary Road is Big Drama done right, a mesmerizing look at desperate lives, wrong moves and spoiled dreams that hits hard right from the beginning and never lets up.

January 9, 2009 Full Review

Tom Long

Detroit News

Top Critic

Viewers in the mood for rip-snorting marital combat should go ahead and partake, but they must prepare to leave the theatre in a state of profound depression.

January 9, 2009 Full Review

Amy Biancolli

Houston Chronicle

Top Critic

These people are not tragic, they're not even pathetic - they're fountains of soap-opera profundities.

August 16, 2011 Full Review

Kelly Vance

East Bay Express

From the director of American Beauty comes another empty, fake-meaningful tale of how rotten it is in the suburbs.

April 4, 2011 Full Review

Dave White

Movies.com

... far beyond deconstructing the man in the gray flannel suit. ... [writer Richard Yates] explored ways we acquire and define our identities from people we love, and how we set our lives on self-deceptive and self-destructive courses.

January 26, 2011 Full Review

Matt Kelemen

Las Vegas CityLife

Revolutionary Road offers nothing you can't see on TV, with more compelling narratives and better performances (save for Michael Shannon).

October 20, 2010 Full Review

R. L. Shaffer

IGN DVD

The characters in this film are weak-willed, pathetic losers. I just couldn't muster much sympathy for the characters that couldn't burst out of the cages of their own design.

January 10, 2010 Full Review

Kevin Carr

7M Pictures

Revolutionary Road is content to stick with hoary cliches about the emptiness of middle-class bourgeois life.

August 30, 2009 Full Review

Sonny Bunch

Washington Times

Middlebrow self-consciousness

August 26, 2009 Full Review

Fernando F. Croce

CinePassion

It's hard to shake the feeling that this is merely a lesser rehash of Mendes' more accomplished film American Beauty.

August 1, 2009 Full Review

Anders Wotzke

Moviedex

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July 15, 2009 Full Review

Dragan Antulov

Index.hr

... Revolutionary Road suggests that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet's hearts would not have gone on had they survived the sinking of the Titanic ....

June 3, 2009 Full Review

Felix Gonzalez Jr.

DVD Review

It plays like Douglas Sirk without the irony.

June 3, 2009 Full Review

Felix Gonzalez Jr.

DVD Review

Not a very revolutionary film, but the focus of the DVD's bonus features is rightfully on Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio's titanic emotional performances.

June 1, 2009 Full Review

Sal Cinquemani

Slant Magazine

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, play the young couple, so you know you're in for some heavy drama. (Blu-ray Edition)

May 31, 2009 Full Review

John J. Puccio

Movie Metropolis

At any moment, we expect the depressed, chain smoking gilded cage suburban house pet Kate to morph into Sylvia Plath, poised to stick her head in the oven, a premature free spirit bloodied Christ figure imprisoned behind a window in a breezy hollow world.

May 30, 2009 Full Review

Prairie Miller

NewsBlaze

A road to ruin paved more by mindless conformity than by good intentions.

May 28, 2009 Full Review

Kam Williams

NewsBlaze

...more of a sedate lecture on values than a revealing or entertaining look at life and love.

May 27, 2009 Full Review | Comments (3)

John J. Puccio

Movie Metropolis

Can't tell whether Mendes speaks through his characters or speaks about them

April 21, 2009 Full Review

Marty Mapes

Movie Habit

Similar yet better domestic dramas that come to mind for comparison purposes include "In the Bedroom," "Little Children" and "American Beauty."

March 21, 2009 Full Review

Keith Cohen

Entertainment Spectrum

• 1. John Givings: I'm glad I'm not gonna be that kid.
  – Submitted by Ram C (12 days ago)
• 1. AprilWheeler: If being crazy means living life as if it matters, then I don't mind being completely insane.
  – Submitted by Samira O (10 months ago)
• 1. AprilWheeler: Look at us. We're just like everyone else. We've bought into the same, ridiculous delusion.
  – Submitted by Samira O (10 months ago)
• 1. AprilWheeler: Tell me the truth, Frank, remember that? We used to live by it. And you know what's so good about the truth? Everyone knows what it is however long they've lived without it. No one forgets the truth, Frank, they just get better at lying.
  – Submitted by Samira O (10 months ago)
• 1. AprilWheeler: Tell me the truth, Frank, remember that? We used to live by it. And you know what's so good about the truth? Everyone knows what it is however long they've lived without it. No one forgets the truth, Frank, they just get better at lying.
  – Submitted by Samira O (10 months ago)
• 1. John Givings: Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.
  – Submitted by Samira O (10 months ago)

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