70
A ballsy mix of interviews and editorializing that's daring enough to question a costly crackdown that has long had the public's support.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
Slant Magazine by Andrew Schenker
The mixture of different techniques and varied views results in a rich, multi-faceted look at one of America's most misguided policy initiatives.
60
Whenever the film focuses more on Jarecki's hand-wringing than deconstructing the war itself, you wish someone would have looked the filmmaker in the eye and just said no.
60
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
As is, the film is more likely to impress the choir than change many minds.
83
A personal work not because the director chooses to make himself a part of the story, but rather because he implicates all of us in it.
75
The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth
While it's messily put together, with a sprawling and at times unfocused narrative that often gets in the way of itself, it doesn't deny the power of the facts Jarecki brings to bear on a misguided program that hasn't stopped the demand for drugs, that has disenfranchised the poor and minorities, and created an expensive prison industry.
80
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
It's easy to take issue with a documentary like The House I Live In, which tackles too much in too brief a time and glosses over complexities, yet this is also a model of the ambitious, vitalizing activist work that exists to stir the sleeping to wake.
70
Village Voice by Melissa Anderson
What's riveting and attention grabbing in Jarecki's recapitulations of failed policy are some of the talking heads he has assembled, including "The Wire" creator David Simon and historian Richard Lawrence Miller.
83
The result is a movie that jumps all over the place, but with the ultimate intention of showing how the public's attitudes and assumptions about drugs have changed over the past half-century, guided by politicians and businessmen with a stake in misinformation.
100
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
David Simon, creator of "The Wire," who argues that the targeting of minorities, fused with mandatory sentencing, has turned the war on drugs into ''a holocaust in slow motion.''