70
Ultimately a complex meditation on this moral conundrum, a raw tale of survival against impossible odds, and a dashing adventure yarn all in one.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
Mountain Patrol: Kekexili is sometimes slow going, yet it builds in power as nature begins to take its toll on the patrol, and its cumulative effects are haunting.
75
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Kekexili is about how human beings, when passionate about something, can put everything, including their lives, at risk for a cause.
80
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
These kinds of merciless conditions lead to a culture that is stoic about life and death and a story that will surprise you by its willingness to embrace that unsentimental natural world.
80
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
Films about environmental catastrophes tend to wax preachy, putting pedagogy and scolding above art. This one, for all its sorrow and the throb of righteous anger it provokes (only about 50,000 antelopes remain), is more than anything a work of creative imagination.
70
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
For all of its well-schooled orthodoxy and visual splendor, Kekexili remains somewhat off-kilter--the characters' passionate wartime camaraderie and doomed sense of martyrdom aren't quite reflected in the facts of volunteer service and devotion to a balanced ecosystem.
91
The A.V. Club by Tasha Robinson
Filmed in long, quiet takes across gorgeous, all-but-empty landscapes, Mountain Patrol feels more like Gus Van Sant's "Gerry" than like the cops-and-robbers thriller its plotline suggests.
75
The stunning adventure Mountain Patrol: Kekexili is like a John Ford western set, not in the master's beloved Monument Valley, but in remotest China.