60
The efforts of victims and victimizers to come to terms with historical trauma are admirable, but the film is too tough-minded to espouse a facile discourse of "healing" in the face of genocide driven by ideology run amok.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
Mr. Rithy Panh makes telling use of a survivor whose ability to communicate lends itself to the subject. The tragedy is that Mr. Vann Nath's powers are used to illuminate these horrors.
100
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
The result is a history lesson both invaluable and horrific.
50
There's no shortage of existing docus on the subject, and Panh's doesn't bring either a fresh enough angle or enough new material to the table to justify its length.
80
S21 is understated and unforgettable; in its modest way, this movie is as horrific an exposure to evil as Lanzmann's "Shoah."
80
Shattering documentary.
70
A harrowing, unblinking look at the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal regime that by some accounts killed off more than a quarter of Cambodia's population between 1975 and 1979.
83
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
Yet S21, unlike many documentaries about the Nazi era, isn't a sickening panorama of brutality. Shot on video, it's quiet and intimate.
60
This is clearly not a pleasant film to watch on many levels.
75
Man's inhumanity to man is gruesomely detailed in S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine.