The Slaughter Rule Reviews

| Original Score: 2/5

Unlike Terrence Malick, whose shadow looms over the film's visual style, the Smiths over-explain, not grasping that all those barren fields and blood-red clouds are doing plenty of work for them.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

A timid template of an indie movie that glides through all the proper turns, sticks up all the appropriate signposts, and never once takes a demanding or truthful step.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Everyone's got demons to deal with -- from Gideon's guilt over a kid that played for him and died under mysterious circumstances to the audience's unwillingness to sit through two hours of yet another inspirational football movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Writer-directors Andrew and Alex Smith go for emotional truth, but what they come up with is often silly.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

First-time filmmakers Andrew and Alex Smith have a potentially intriguing and very different tale, but they consistently shoot themselves in the foot with their amateurishly self-conscious direction.

Full Review

None of the characters' troubled histories or transformations are as compelling as Gosling and Duvall's unforced emotional complexity would promise or merit.

Full Review

| Original Score: 2/5

Morse, usually saddled with earnest supporting parts, is a revelation in the role, his boundless, good-natured energy camouflaging the contradictions roiling beneath the surface.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Montana's wide-open spaces -- and the closed hearts of the people who live there -- make for a sincere, superbly acted story of loss and need.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

A coming-of-age tale that nicely exploits the ruggedness of rural Montana and the rough-hewn, often tenuous nature of male friendships in those parts.

It has hints of greatness, but fails to completely realize them.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

Gosling and Morse give strong performances in this bitter pill movie.

| Original Score: 3/5

This promising but confused first film is best viewed as a touching portrait of thwarted, volatile male passion in a world where you could almost say that geography is destiny

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

The lead performances could hardly be better.

Full Review

Sex, alcohol, and the brutality of football. It may seem like a 'guy' movie, but the relationship struggles make this accessible to all audiences.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

Best movie I saw in 2002. Features a terrifyingly real performance by David Morse.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

David Morse, who's spent the last 20 years kicking around network television and building up an resume of impressive movie credits, establishes himself as a truly formidable presence in this powerful first feature by Alex and Andrew Smith.

Full Review

Beautiful in its stark way.

Full Review

Its focus on the complex relationship between an emotionally wounded youth and the sexually ambiguous older man who mentors him is a welcome detour from genre routine.

| Original Score: 2.5/4

Full Review