TV Guide Magazine by Frank Lovece

The able cast brings these emotionally complex characters to life, while making Shawn Slovo's occasionally lyrical dialogue sound perfectly natural.

USA Today by Mike Clark

The result is far from perfect, but to its many merits, add timing. You never get a movie with this kind of story in mid-August.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold

Ultimately, it's a surprisingly empty experience.

New York Daily News by Jami Bernard

Grand passion, secrecy, world politics and mortal danger provide a heady mix for this spectacularly beautiful movie. If only the accents were as reliable as the azure of the sea.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

In this film there is a scene where something is said in English pronounced with one accent, and a character asks, ''What did he say?'' and he is told -- in English pronounced with another accent.

Chicago Reader by Lisa Alspector

Strives for comprehensive coverage of its theme of forbidden love.

San Francisco Chronicle by Bob Graham

Handsomely weathered John Hurt, as Pelagia's father, gives a performance of such unhackneyed dignity that it provides a moral compass for the action and helps to keep the ricocheting emotional content of the film in balance.

Newsweek by David Ansen

Every role is miscast. Whose idea was it to have the boyishly British Bale play an illiterate Greek peasant, or the elegant Hurt a gruff-voiced country doctor? Cruz’s run of bad luck in American movies continues.

Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan

The real problem is not the maudlin script or Madden's travelogue touch. It's Cage as Corelli, a miscasting that turns the normally volatile, edgy performer into little more than a spokesman for the Olive Garden.

Slate by David Edelstein

Probably the most horrifying stuff I've seen all week.