Like The Magdalene Sisters, Soraya M offers its audience only those appalling truths they want to know about the evils of an alien culture they are already inclined to look down upon.
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06/26/09
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The Stoning of Soraya M. (2009)
53
%
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Reviews Counted:62
Fresh:33
Rotten:29
Average Rating:5.6/10
Consensus: The Stoning of Soraya M. nearly transcends its deficiencies through the sheer strength of its subject material, but ultimately drowns out its message with an inappropriately heavy-handed approach.
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Reviews for The Stoning of Soraya M.
The film, shot elegantly in color but with the dramatic feel of black and white, functions as a parable of power abused by the multitude. It takes a village to turn craven stupidity into fascist bestiality.
06/26/09
Top Critic[A] shattering and powerful drama.
06/26/09
Iranian American director Cyrus Nowrasteh has amplified the basic elements of Suraya's story into the worst kind of exploitive Hollywood melodrama, presented under the virtuous guise of moral outrage.
06/26/09
Top CriticIt's so relentless that it's hard to imagine anyone willingly seeing it on purpose.
06/26/09
The Stoning of Soraya M. thoroughly blurs the line between high-minded outrage and lurid torture-porn.
06/26/09
Top CriticAn exploitative propaganda piece that seems to exist for only one queasy reason--to allow Western audiences to witness the sight of a woman being brutally stoned to death in a sequence staged with all the sadistic delectation of a slasher movie.
06/25/09
What keeps us watching is the path -- from outrage, to fear, to resigned martyrdom -- of Mozhan Marno, who plays the blameless victim, and the speak-truth-to-power courage of Aghdashloo as her tireless advocate, desperately looking for justice.
06/25/09
Top CriticThis is less a movie than a blunt instrument, a bit of political parable, a bit more outrage, and nary a scrap of real drama or finesse.
06/25/09
Top CriticAnyone who thought "The Passion of the Christ," with which this film shares producer Stephen McEveety and star Caviezel, was its own form of torture porn, be forewarned.
06/25/09
The Stoning Of Soraya M. crawls forward in excruciating slow motion toward the inevitable day when sinners cast the first, second, third, and fourth (etc.) stone, stacking the deck at every turn along the way.
06/25/09
It’s a big ol’ wallow in unpleasantness, a film that relies on simplistically patriarchal antagonists and vague, wet-willie cries for intervention.
06/25/09
The Stoning of Soraya M. has such a powerful stoning sequence that I recommend it if only for its brutal ideological message.
06/25/09
Top CriticThe expansive dramatic approach makes sense, even at its most cringe-inducing, as Stoning is a picture created solely to disturb and provoke, not educate. With those goals in mind, the film is a smashing success.
06/25/09
Graphically depicts the horrors inflicted on an innocent woman in an Iranian village, the result of a fatal combination of a patriarchal society, tribal traditions, and Islamic fundamentalism.
06/24/09
Right now, you're better off just watching the news.
06/24/09
The Stoning of Soraya M. functions as a message-movie slasher film.
06/22/09
...there is something condescending and judgmental in the filmmaker's subtext that seems to exonerate Western culture as somehow less complicit in the atrocious murders that it commits against innocent and guilty citizens alike.
06/20/09
The movie suffers from problems that plague other message-social protest films and from helmer's lack of technical experience, but there's no denying of its thematic significance in stressing sexism, barabric punishment, mob rule and mass tyranny.
06/13/09
A devastating (albeit didactic and conventional) indictment of religious extremism as practiced in one Iranian village.
06/04/09
Latest News for The Stoning of Soraya M.
November 29, 2009:
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Signaling that the awards season is about to begin, the International Press Academy has announced the nominees for its 14th annual Satellite Awards. More...
June 25, 2009:
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June 23, 2009:
Shohreh Aghdashloo, Fearless Advocate
Shohreh Aghdashloo has been an outspoken critic of the Iranian government for years -- and her latest film, "The Stoning of Soraya M.," arrives at a time when violent unrest in... More...
April 19, 2009:
Trailer & Poster review
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