Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

Loach is a super-realist, and Sweet Sixteen has the disarming feel of a documentary. It's a film that miraculously catches life on the fly, without apparent embellishment, cliche or melodrama.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

Sweet Sixteen shows that he's (Loach) as capable of anger as his protagonist and just as eager to draw attention to an unchanging problem: the blight of generational poverty.

Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan

With unsurprising irony, the "Sixteen" of the title foreshadows Liam's birthday and even worse calamity, which makes a grim and gripping story all the more heartbreaking.

Variety by David Rooney

Rendered deeply moving by the director's peerless capacity to combine humor and compassion with honesty and despair.

Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

I'm not prone to like socially deterministic films of this kind, yet Loach is so masterful at squeezing nuance and truth out of the form that I was completely won over.

Village Voice by Jessica Winter

In a remarkably subtle, assured debut performance, Compston evokes Billy in Loach's "Kes" and, in the heartbreaking final seaside shot, Antoine in Truffaut's "400 Blows."

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

It's one of the most emotional and compelling the filmmaker has ever made. Confident, uncompromising and blisteringly realistic, Sweet Sixteen is a gritty and immediate film yet it goes right to the emotions.

Washington Post by Stephen Hunter

It's a classic story in form, and in this country it used to star Jimmy Cagney.

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

With startling clarity and dreadful logic, Loach and Laverty make sense of every bad choice Compston makes until he runs out of options, locked into a destiny that he can't escape, mainly because his good intentions are clouded by tragic naivete.

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

The explosively combative young hero, Liam (a brilliant performance by Martin Compston), has only the illusion of a fighting chance. Yet Sweet Sixteen is powerful because of the searing honesty with which it strips Liam of his illusions.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

It's an uncompromising movie that illustrates one of the most convincing personality transformations that I have seen in a recent motion picture.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

It's a beautiful, grim tale.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

The movie's performances have a simplicity and accuracy that is always convincing. Compston, who plays Liam, is a local 17-year-old discovered in auditions at his school. He has never acted before, but is effortlessly natural.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Paula Nechak

A hard film to shake and makes us think and think again.

L.A. Weekly by Ella Taylor

It's not a happy film, but there's much incidental, quotidian happiness in it. Like Lynne Ramsay's lovely "Ratcatcher," the movie is far from sentimental about children.

Dallas Observer by Bill Gallo

There are no hearts and flowers in Loach's hard-edged world, no kindly interventions, no signs from heaven. Instead, he gives us the unvarnished facts about working-class exploitation and the failure of ambition in low places.

Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt

Loach has made more memorable films, such as "Raining Stones" and "Ladybird Ladybird," but his dramatic sense remains strong and his social conscience is absolutely unstoppable.

Miami Herald by René Rodríguez

Watching this essentially good but misguided kid slide into a hopeless future is both transfixing and heartbreaking.