Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt

The acting is brilliant and Leigh's screenplay - developed through his usual process of improvisation and rehearsal - is very long on compassion, very short on preaching and politics.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

Stunning and compassionate period drama.

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

Vera Drake puts the passion in compassion. Building up to a shattering conclusion, Leigh's movie is both outrageously schematic and powerfully humanist.

Variety by David Rooney

Mike Leigh is at the peak of his powers with Vera Drake, a compassionate, morally complex drama that stands easily alongside his best work, "Secrets & Lies" and "Topsy-Turvy."

New York Daily News by Jami Bernard

A marvel of character-driven drama that no serious filmgoer should miss.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

Among its many excellences, Vera Drake functions superbly as a pure thriller; the last half is reminiscent in structure and detail of Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man."

Washington Post by Desson Thomson

Few movies have evoked the happiness of a good, strong family as genuinely as this one. And this affecting atmosphere makes the eventual outcome resonate with great power.

USA Today by Mike Clark

This is the kind of people-driven story that the movies used to give us - before special effects took over.

Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy

In absorbing drama and staggering emotions, it renders an issue too often seen as black or white in heartbreaking gray.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

The strength of Leigh's film is that it is not a message picture, but a deep and true portrait of these lives.

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

The English director Mike Leigh's best work in a decade.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

Using Staunton's face as his canvas, Leigh crafts a powerfully moving film that is unmissable and unforgettable.

The New Yorker by David Denby

Marvellous, though it is smaller in emotional range than such earlier Mike Leigh films as the goofy bourgeois satire "High Hopes" (1988), the candid and piercing "Secrets & Lies" (1996), and the splendid theatrical spectacle "Topsy-Turvy" (1999).

The Hollywood Reporter

It's difficult to think of another recent film so seamlessly rendered or that envelops an audience so completely in its period authenticity.

Salon by Charles Taylor

When one of the young women Vera attends to nearly dies of complications, the police arrest her -- and the movie goes thud, taking Staunton's performance along with it.

Film Threat by Phil Hall

The film's screenplay is thick with major lapses in logic, resulting in a story that ultimately makes little sense.