Hunger

Los Angeles Times by

The first-time director's unflinching camera, deliberate pacing and maddeningly long takes just amplify the story's innate harshness and test audience endurance levels.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

The brutality in the film is pervasive and often stomach turningly graphic, but what is perhaps most unnerving is the tact, patience and care with which Mr. McQueen depicts its causes and effects.

Chicago Reader by Andrea Gronvall

The fulcrum of this deeply humanist work is an extended two-shot of the strike's leader, Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), as he converses with a priest (Liam Cunningham); the virtuosic sequence encapsulates the whole sorry history of a horrific civil war.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

The movie is a political remake of "The Passion of the Christ," only more aestheticized: It's rigorous, evocative, and, in spite of its grisly imagery, elegant. It's a triumph--of masochistic literal-mindedness.

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

A superbly balanced piece of work, addressing the passion of Irish Republican martyr Bobby Sands.

New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier

An emotionally devastating drama that isn't for the squeamish.

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

Hunger may be criticized for being willfully arty, or for reducing a complex political situation to a broadly allegorical vision of martyrdom, but it's never less than visually stunning.

The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett

Trite, grim and feebly provocative.