Dead Man Walking

It's ironic that a film with this title should be among the most vital, alive, and challenging cinema experiences of the year. Read full review

Acting rarely gets better than this. Read full review

Sarandon delivers one of her very best performances; her shock at encountering the wrath of the victim's family is registered beautifully. And Sean Penn, who for too long has suffered with the label of being a "bad boy," gives an Oscar-caliber performance.[12 January 1996, Friday, p.B]

A bold, searching, wrenching experience. It may be the most complexly impassioned message movie Hollywood has ever made.

This film ennobles filmmaking. Read full review

Happily, there's nothing to misconstrue about the film: It's fabulous. Read full review

An extremely affecting experience, down to the last agonizing moment. Read full review

Sean Penn gives the most riveting, selfless performance of his career. Read full review

Quietly courageous drama . Read full review

A complex, myriad-faceted work of art.

Dead Man Walking drops a massive, writhing knot of sorrow in your lap and then doesn't tell you what to do with it. If that doesn't sound like entertainment to you, you're right. It does something far more profound: It finds the tragic universal core of a contentious issue. Read full review

Their (Sarandon, Penn) performances and Robbins' drive to ask questions without offering easy answers make Dead Man Walking a thought-provoking drama not to be missed or dismissed.

Possesses that rarest of qualities: moral humility. Read full review

It is a measure of its complexity--and of the forces Penn and Sarandon have held in reserve during their hypnotic struggle for his soul--that its final moments leave us awash in emotion. Read full review

An intimate chamber piece for two, superbly acted by Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, this is a mature, well-crafted movie. Read full review

What this intelligent, balanced, devastating movie puts before us is nothing less than a contest between good and evil. Read full review

Robbins' direction and script are nearly flawlessly rich. There are no easy answers on death row, and Dead Man Walking makes this painfully, powerfully clear. Read full review

No simple diatribe against capital punishment, it's a strong film, made stronger by two terrific performances. Read full review

Unusual in both its subject matter and its approach, this film guides us on a pair of intertwined paths American movies rarely venture down.

This isn't a crowd-pleaser in terms of subject matter -- you've got a convict and a nun, with no love scenes -- but Robbins keeps it interesting.

The movie is often preachy and self-conscious, especially in long dialogue scenes, where Robbins's inexpert scriptwriting makes people talk at instead of with each other. Yet the picture's solid assets enable it to soar above such problems, both intellectually and emotionally. [29 December 1995, Film, p.13]

Troubling and troubled. Read full review

Has its awkward and square moments directorially, but it's also uncommonly honest and serious. Read full review

Sarandon is terrific and Penn is in top form, but the film is an achingly earnest message movie with a curiously muddled message. Read full review

Overpraised, intellectually soft, narratively unfocused, and thematically ambivalent.

The picture is cloudy in intent. That cloudiness is deepened by Susan Sarandon's performance as Sister Helen. If she were giving the role what it seems to demand, a glow of true religious light, the film would have some organic cohesion, a strong spiritual cord running through it. But Sarandon does little more than present her face. [Feb. 5, 1996]