80
Hillcoat and Cave have here found their most fertile ground yet for allegory-rich examinations of life and death in remote, pressure-cooker environments.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
It is one of those movies--Antonioni's "Red Desert" being the most flagrant example--that spend so much time brimming with moral and political suggestion that they almost forget to tell us what's actually going on.
80
The Proposition is a very hard and harsh movie, but it also has a hypnotic, lyrical velocity. As Arthur, Huston exudes dead charisma.
80
The climactic Christmas Day dinner of dreadful retribution is a terrifying prospect, but for anyone with a yen for our great lost genre, it's also some sort of gift.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt
A fascinating, mythological western.
75
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
A sweat-slicked, near-abstract ballet of blood and sand.
70
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
The cast of The Proposition is reason enough to see the film.
42
The sketchily symbolic characters and flat plot just frame an atmosphere of sticky heat and Biblical reckoning.
75
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
The veteran rock musician Nick Cave wrote the screenplay and John Hillcoat directed, both somewhat in thrall to Sam Peckinpah. The bonds of family are the centerpiece of this highly uneven, hyperviolent film.
60
A good film, but it should’ve been a great one.