60
Bandele’s keen handling of cast and domestic conflict makes for a nuanced historical epic, but he’s less sure on the big stuff.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
An uneven blend of melodrama and the horrors of civil war, it should be anchored by strong leads but instead remains listless and adrift.
63
Slant Magazine by Clayton Dillard
It falls into the trappings of middlebrow literary adaptation by finding only sporadic means to convincingly adjudicate the trauma and anguish of its transitory epoch.
40
Newcomers will be puzzled by the clumsy contextualisation and muddled motivation of characters who, robbed of their inner lives by a clunky script, are left floundering amid the melodrama and speak-the-plot dialogue.
60
The rare prestige pic that could actually stand to be longer.
60
The Hollywood Reporter by Leslie Felperin
Half of a Yellow Sun is the kind of ambitious literary adaptation that wants it all kinds of ways, not all of them compatible.
60
The Telegraph by Mike McCahill
Only a film as big as Africa could have done Adichie’s novel full justice; the treatment it gets here, equally honourable and hurried, reduces it to Nigerian soap with BAFTA-level acting.
40
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
the film is often stately and sluggish with some very daytime-soapy moments of emotional revelation.
60
Time Out London by Trevor Johnston
Half of a Yellow Sun bravely takes on too broad a canvas with too narrow a budget, but it’s a relevant saga that’s worth telling.