65
Metascore
41 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 88ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliThe movie, written for the screen and directed by Scott Cooper (who helmed Jeff Bridges’ Oscar-winning performance in "Crazy Heart"), is careful not to demonize anyone and make the path to redemption both slow and methodical.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyThe Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyContemplative and absorbing rather than rip-roaring and exciting, the film will likely play better to Western connoisseurs than to general and younger audiences, but it's an estimable piece of work grounded by a fine-grain sensibility and an expertly judged lead performance.
- 70Screen DailyAllan HunterScreen DailyAllan HunterHostiles demands patience and concentration but rewards that with an assured, thought-provoking window into a past whose legacy is still being felt to this day.
- 67IndieWireDavid EhrlichIndieWireDavid EhrlichThis is a proudly traditional oater that travels down old trails with new sadism, as though the Western genre only died off because the movies weren’t cruel enough.
- 60The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawA flawed, but interesting drama.
- 60New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaNew York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaHostiles is a brutal if well-intentioned film that doesn’t help its cause with its lack of development of its Native characters.
- 58The PlaylistGregory EllwoodThe PlaylistGregory EllwoodBale and Pike are superb. Despite some melodramatic tendencies and strange choices in Cooper’s script they make you have sympathy and compassion for each of their characters.
- 58The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyThe A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyLike Cooper’s Rust Belt faux-noir "Out Of The Furnace," it’s an exercise in strained seriousness, the potential ironies and dramatic tensions lost in a repetitive, episodic, and politically vapid narrative.
- 50VarietyPeter DebrugeVarietyPeter DebrugeThough it basically argues that the surest way to overcome racism is to spend some time getting to know “the other,” Cooper’s film offers audiences no such opportunity, depriving its native characters of so much as a single scene in which they are treated as anything more than abstract plot devices in service of the white folks’ enlightenment.
- 38Slant MagazineChuck BowenSlant MagazineChuck BowenScott Cooper's film moves at a funereal pace, implicitly celebrating its sluggishness as a mark of integrity.