Time Out by David Fear

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.

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.

Empire by Anna Smith

An insight-filled take on prejudice in post-11/7 London that packs a hefty punch.

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.

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.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

The film has been criticized by some as too politically correct. Perhaps so. But the characters' reality rises above the film's ideas and makes it human.

Village Voice

Director Rachid Bouchareb brings a measured hand to this intimate, occasionally overdetermined sketch of the aloneness at the center of our global confluence.

Village Voice by Michelle Orange

Director Rachid Bouchareb brings a measured hand to this intimate, occasionally overdetermined sketch of the aloneness at the center of our global confluence.

Arizona Republic by Bill Goodykoontz

The performances, by Brenda Blethyn and Sotigui Kouyaté, are outstanding.

Chicago Reader by J.R. Jones

A heart-wrenching performance from Brenda Blethyn sustains this 2009 drama by French writer-director Rachid Bouchareb.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

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.

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.

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.

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

The contrived script lacks subtlety, rendering most characters as stereotypes.