San Francisco Chronicle by Edward Guthmann

Downbeat, ultimately tragic, but there's a wondrous, sad beauty here.

Portland Oregonian by Kim Morgan

It's almost numbingly sad, but you won't regret watching -- and you'll surely never forget it.

Time by Richard Schickel

Unsparing but never unsympathetic, emerges as one of the year's best, most brutally honest movies.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

There is something about Stephen Frears' complex, heartbreaking, beautifully made Liam that seems to speak eloquently, painfully to the dilemmas we are facing today, to the terrible price dark times can extort from us all.

Washington Post by Stephen Hunter

Stephen Frears's stunning Liam, -- a vivid, intense evocation of another British time and place.

Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan

It is through the genius of Frears, screenwriter Jimmy McGovern and this talented cast that Liam lets no one off the hook, least of all the audience.

USA Today by Mike Clark

Ultimately grim, Liam is ripe in humanity --and even comedy.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Some will find Dad's last big act in the movie too melodramatic. I think it follows from a certain logic, and leads to the very last shot, which is heartbreaking in its tenderness.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

The acting -- especially by Borrows, Ian Hart and Hackett -- is strong and transparent, utterly convincing. The whole movie has a seamless flow and an utterly convincing sense of time and place.

Variety by David Stratton

This depiction of the trials and tribulations of a working-class Catholic family during the Depression is a far more intimate viewing experience than the similarly themed "Angela's Ashes."

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

While there are similarities to the hardscrabble saga of "Angela's Ashes," Frears' film avoids the mawkish pitfalls of Alan Parker's screen adaptation.

Boston Globe by Jay Carr

Frears makes every note count for a lot in this beautifully gauged microcosm of big emotions expressed in small gestures.

New York Post by Lou Lumenick

Director Frears, in a radical shift from "High Fidelity," again (as in "Dangerous Liaisons") shows he's a master of period detail and subtle storytelling -- and the performances couldn't be more on the money.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker

What's left at the end is an emotionally restrained vision of harsh, impoverished lives, more thoughtful than affecting, and never less than gorgeous, but so unfocused it leaves only scattered impressions.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer

Has some rapturously observant sequences concerning childhood.

New Times (L.A.) by Luke Y. Thompson

Though the film came out a year ago in the U.K., the timing here is unfortunate, and one has to wish that, like so many bigger productions, Liam could have migrated to a more-distant release date.

New York Daily News by Jami Bernard

Handsomely mounted but disappointingly slight.

Village Voice by Amy Taubin

Acting is the strongest element in Stephen Frears's Liam.