Carandiru 2003

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: A soft, simplistic look at a tough, complicated subject. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: After watching Carandiru, one recalls the movie's inmates with sadness, the doctor with affection, the prison with fear and loathing and the movie with that sure, strong recognition you feel after seeing, for the first time, a classic. Read more

Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times: Has moments of raw, unflinching power. Read more

Steve Murray, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: The movie has a tactile reality. You can almost smell it. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Babenco brings the place and the prisoners alive. Read more

Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times: It plunges us deep inside a corrupt system and its sincere empathy creates a stirring mix of emotions. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Babenco weaves the stories of a dozen inmates into a densely textured fabric, capturing the feel of a closed society whose members have lost their freedom yet still maintain a tenuous grip on their humanity. Read more

Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: We come to like [the characters], to respect their yearning for redemption, which is why the ending is so powerful. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Babenco's side trips into the prisoners' lives give the movie a complicated integrity. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Lays on the compassion a little thick, yet its heartfelt squalor stays with you. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: The two-part structure feels inescapably manipulative. Read more

Jane Sumner, Dallas Morning News: An urgent piece of cinema -- a shiv in the ribs and right cross to the chin -- that's also a salutation to human solidarity and the will to live. Read more

John Patterson, L.A. Weekly: One of the richest prison movies in years. Read more

Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger: [Babenco] tries to create the illusion of substance by crowding the film with plotlines, but all it really amounts to is lack of focus and purpose. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Though the film is based on fact, most of its characters exist only in movies. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: Hector Babenco's sprawling portrait of Brazil's criminal class exudes a throbbing flesh-and-blood intensity so compelling that it's impossible to avert your eyes. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: We're served up meaty, often spicy, slices of sadly wasted lives. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: It shows 8,000 men jammed into space meant for 4,000, and enforcing their own laws in a place their society has abandoned. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: One might expect a dreary, depressing film, and to an extent it is, but there are many flashes of lightness, not of humor so much as of simple human vividness, which keeps challenging us to see the prisoners as individuals. Read more

Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Carandiru is no typical prison movie. And that's a good thing. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Despite its structural flaws, Carandiru presents more interesting characters than you'd see in a dozen other prison movies. Read more

Time Out: Read more

Mike Clark, USA Today: The Kiss of the Spider Woman director's first film in seven years staves off viewer monotony and claustrophobia in portraying the fate of 7,800 inmates packed into a prison built for half as many. Read more

Deborah Young, Variety: It moves forward on the sheer strength of its portraiture, thanks to an exceptionally good ensemble cast that brings the inmates to life as individuals, not genre types. Read more

Jessica Winter, Village Voice: Every scene is cut from factory-issue prison-genre cloth to fit jailhouse stock characters. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: As a 2 1/2-hour sentence to the graybar hotel, the movie can't be topped. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: It is Carandiru's ability to humanize its central characters -- to make you care about the murderers, thieves, junkies and whores who are Carandiru's citizens, and its doomed heroes -- that gives the movie its wrenching, tragic power. Read more