The A.V. Club by Tasha Robinson

Filmed in long, quiet takes across gorgeous, all-but-empty landscapes, Mountain Patrol feels more like Gus Van Sant's "Gerry" than like the cops-and-robbers thriller its plotline suggests.

Washington Post by Ann Hornaday

Extraordinary on many levels...because Mountain Patrol instead becomes what might be the first Chinese conservationist spaghetti western ever made.

Newsweek by David Ansen

This is a one-of-a-kind action flick: a tale of triumph tinged at every moment with tragedy.

TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

A fascinating film that also benefits greatly from the stunning scenery of the Tibetan plateau and from a quicksand scene that will leave you gasping.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips

This largely non-verbal picture uses only as many words (spoken in Mandarin and Tibetan, with English subtitles) as necessary, and draws you in as surely as one of his characters, in an amazing sequence, is drawn into.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

What is remarkable is that this film is based on a true story, and filmed on the actual locations. These are hard, violent men, risking their lives to save an animal species.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

Mountain Patrol is breathtakingly beautiful, breathtakingly brutal and simply breathtaking.

Variety

Exquisite to behold and with a stimulating storyline that mixes guns with ecological consciousness, picture is a considerable change of pace for director Lu Chuan.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

These kinds of merciless conditions lead to a culture that is stoic about life and death and a story that will surprise you by its willingness to embrace that unsentimental natural world.

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

Films about environmental catastrophes tend to wax preachy, putting pedagogy and scolding above art. This one, for all its sorrow and the throb of righteous anger it provokes (only about 50,000 antelopes remain), is more than anything a work of creative imagination.

L.A. Weekly by Chuck Wilson

Mountain Patrol: Kekexili is sometimes slow going, yet it builds in power as nature begins to take its toll on the patrol, and its cumulative effects are haunting.

Variety by Russell Edwards

Exquisite to behold and with a stimulating storyline that mixes guns with ecological consciousness, picture is a considerable change of pace for director Lu Chuan.

Premiere

The result is a film that's almost unremittingly bleak, but also consistently compelling.

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

The stunning adventure Mountain Patrol: Kekexili is like a John Ford western set, not in the master's beloved Monument Valley, but in remotest China.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Kekexili is about how human beings, when passionate about something, can put everything, including their lives, at risk for a cause.

Film Threat

Ultimately a complex meditation on this moral conundrum, a raw tale of survival against impossible odds, and a dashing adventure yarn all in one.

Village Voice by Michael Atkinson

For all of its well-schooled orthodoxy and visual splendor, Kekexili remains somewhat off-kilter--the characters' passionate wartime camaraderie and doomed sense of martyrdom aren't quite reflected in the facts of volunteer service and devotion to a balanced ecosystem.