63
Movie Nation by Roger Moore
It doesn’t wholly come off, with back stories too thinly developed, pathos and cruelty blending with the whimsy of a New York con.
The Kindness of Strangers
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- Denmark,
- Canada,
- Sweden
- 2019
- · 112m
Director
Lone Scherfig
Cast
Zoe Kazan,
Andrea Riseborough,
Tahar Rahim,
Caleb Landry Jones,
Jay Baruchel,
Bill Nighy
Genre
Drama
Clara and her two sons escape from her abusive husband with little more than their car and plan to start over in New York. After the car towed away, the family meets Alice, who gets them into an emergency shelter. While stealing food at a Russian restaurant called ‘Winter Palace’, Clara meets Marc, who has been given the chance to help the old eatery regain its former glory. The ‘Winter Palace’ soon becomes a place of unexpected encounters between people who are all undergoing some sort of crisis and whom fate has now brought together.
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What are critics saying?
50
Screen Daily by Wendy Ide
It’s a big-hearted picture, certainly, but one that doggedly labours its message.
50
Screen International by Wendy Ide
It’s a big-hearted picture, certainly, but one that doggedly labours its message.
42
IndieWire by David Ehrlich
While the movie works to depict how kindness breeds kindness, even in the cruelest of environments, it spends much of the time watching its motley collection of lost souls chase their own tails.
40
Variety by Guy Lodge
Too much of the kindness in “Strangers” feels sentimentally story-dictated rather than born of profound human observation, leaving you with mild, woolly good feeling but little to contemplate or chew on.
40
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
The Kindness of Strangers is one of those terrible ideas for a film: ensemble dramas that are superficially attractive because of all the big names shoehorned into the cast-list.
38
RogerEbert.com by Tomris Laffly
Scherfig’s latest effort pursues something naively magical, only to end up with a mélange of miscalculated, cheap sentiments.
38
Slant Magazine by Pat Brown
The film’s repetitive and lifeless dialogue robs otherwise charismatic performers of distinguishing characteristics.
30
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
As a supposed snapshot of life in the unaccommodating big city, and of the humane gestures that can soften that harshness, it feels utterly synthetic, not to mention a romantically "European" view of New York that's sheer nonsense.
25
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Barry Hertz
Okay, one kind word: Bill Nighy is clearly enjoying himself playing a New York businessman whose caviar restaurant improbably becomes a beacon for a host of impoverished ne’re-do-wells. But that is the only nicety I can muster for this otherwise cartoonish treacle.
25
The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor
In spite of it all, the cast members do themselves justice for the most and I couldn’t help but be charmed by Riseborough’s wide-eyed decency as she hosts her frequent “forgiveness” meetings–not to mention be seduced by Nighy’s signature suave detachment.
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