70
Director Rachid Bouchareb brings a measured hand to this intimate, occasionally overdetermined sketch of the aloneness at the center of our global confluence.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
Slant Magazine by Andrew Schenker
Rachid Bouchareb casts his account of the horrifying aftermath of tragedy on an intimate scale, allowing the halting words and frightened faces of his two leads to tell us as much as we need to know about the uncertainties of those faced with tracking down their lost loved ones.
80
An insight-filled take on prejudice in post-11/7 London that packs a hefty punch.
80
It's a credit to both the actors and Franco-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb (Days of Glory) that the film never dives headfirst into mawkishness.
60
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
The script, co-written by Bouchareb, is regrettably simplistic. But Blethyn and Kouyaté inhabit and expand the film's earnestly instructive intentions, leaving us with a deeply-felt experience rather than a naively-sketched lesson.
67
Can actors save a mediocre movie? In London River, they come close. Blethyn's frantic, sad naivete creates a fascinating contrast to Kouyaté's understated performance.
80
Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein
Blethyn brings tremendous empathy to the introspective, determined Elisabeth, while the tall, gaunt and dreadlocked Ousmane fleshes out his less-dimensional role with a haunting sadness that speaks volumes.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Rick Groen
Here, in orderly fiction, the reverberations bring about the alignment of cultures, the meeting of minds and the comforting assertion that "our lives aren't that different." Maybe so, and the film deserves full marks for trying, at times movingly, to convince us. In the end, the argument is a little too neat to accept, but far too poignant to ignore.
60
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
Rachid Bouchareb's tidy little two-character film, London River, demonstrates how great acting can infuse a banal, politically correct drama with dollops of emotional truth.
50
The contrived script lacks subtlety, rendering most characters as stereotypes.