Beaufort 2007

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader: [A] blistering antiwar film. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: Beaufort is a deliberate, reserved dramatization of how an army stands down. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: The soldiers feel stuck and so do we. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: One of the strongest examples yet of a fearless new wave that has made Israel's cinema a force on the international scene. Read more

Nell Minow, Denver Post: [Director Joseph] Cedar gives a surreal, dreamlike quality to many scenes, underscoring the soldiers' isolation. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Adapting his spare, intense, award-winning film from the novel by Israeli TV programmer Ron Leshem, Joseph Cedar has created a movie of tremendous power -- nerve-racking, astute, and neutral enough to apply to all soldiers, in all wars, everywhere. Read more

Jonathan F. Richards, Film.com: It makes an urgent case for the futility of most wars, which serve immediate political goals that afterward don't seem terribly important. Read more

Kamal Al-Solaylee, Globe and Mail: Clearly something has gone MIA in moving from the small pictures into a cohesive big one. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Cedar's film traffics in the mad illogic of battles whose long-forgotten purpose has hardened into mindless routine. But this hushed, atmospheric mood piece, intricately scripted by Cedar and novelist Ron Leshem, is no action picture. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Pro-war audiences on both sides will find Joseph Cedar's vision irresponsible. I think Beaufort captures a higher irresponsibility. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: Cedar, who was born in New York and now lives in Israel, has a mission of his own: to show the folly of war. He succeeds, even if the claustrophobic filming sometimes makes viewers feel as closed in as the Israeli troops. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The audience becomes disheartened long before the protagonist does, and so a full hour before the movie has ended, the audience has received the message, digested it and is ready for the fadeout. Read more

Nell Minow, Chicago Sun-Times: A profound exploration of identity, meaning and human struggles in all times and places. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: As long as soldiers have gone into battle they have struggled with the rightness of their actions and their purpose in the field -- no matter how firm their resolve at the outset. Read more

Wally Hammond, Time Out: 'Beaufort' mounts an impressively credible 'expressionist' reconstruction of the futility and contradictions of war as experienced by these men. Its limitation comes from a fundamental failure of vision. Read more

Leslie Felperin, Variety: Although there's muted criticism here of military strategy, script endeavors to maintain a politically neutral stance, sticking to the ground soldiers' points of view, rendered convincingly here by cast and third-time helmer Joseph Cedar. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: The camera never leaves the beleaguered compound, and Beaufort itself becomes a character in the story, a surrealistic zone of tunnels, bunkers and sandbags, about as far from the possibility of heroism as possible. Read more