Donnybrook
IFC Films | Release Date: February 15, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
53
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
3
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezSep 12, 2018
A stunning, often flooring masterwork about desperation, writer/director Tim Sutton’s, “Donnybrook” is a brutal elegy for those living on the forgotten fringes of America. Read full review
80
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 12, 2018
Filmmaker Tim Sutton elicits pitiless performances from Frank Grillo and Jamie Bell playing two very different criminals on a collision course, and the film exudes a grungy, B-movie ethos in keeping with its scrappy, resourceful characters. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnFeb 13, 2019
Sutton’s tricky balance of B-movie caricatures and gloomy expressionism doesn’t always match up, but that very discordance speaks to the potency of its themes. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorSep 12, 2018
The apocalyptic vision of the heartland created by Sutton and his cast (based on the novel by Frank Bill) is impressively convincing, even if the themes are often overstated and the film itself is very hard to watch. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshFeb 14, 2019
Anchored by a quartet of fierce performances, “Donnybrook” is an intense, visceral tone poem, a rumination on money and drugs and bloodshed as a means of making ends meet in the heartland of modern America. Read full review
70
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 12, 2018
For Sutton — whose previous film, “Dark Night,” inspired by 2012’s Aurora megaplex shooting, made an austere statement about gun violence — Donnybrook marks a major step forward in both ambition and style. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerFeb 16, 2019
As a depiction of the lowest ebbs of what is written off as flyover country, Donnybrook doesn't lack for empathy for the truly unsympathetic. What is in short supply is any sense of direction. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineChris BarsantiFeb 11, 2019
The film knots several strands of new-millennium despair into something that very nearly approximates greatness in its first half. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloFeb 13, 2019
Here, Sutton is working with actual characters, played by professional actors, and his instinct is to flatten them as much as possible. Read full review
48
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiFeb 13, 2019
The cynicism of Donnybrook is overpowering, but unfocused. It’s easy to see why some people would react strongly to its ugly tale of misery and violence, and yet without context and contrast, without making statements beyond “the world sure does suck,” Sutton’s film feels frustratingly hollow. It makes an impact but leaves no impression. Read full review
40
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 12, 2018
It’s a pulpy slab of exploitation masquerading as an important treatise on the struggles faced by the working class in rural America, thumping us in the face with its shallow viewpoint until we beg for mercy. Or at least the credits. Read full review
30
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisFeb 14, 2019
Ear-shredding to listen to (the soundtrack, between chunks of a comically portentous score, is mostly thrash metal) and soul-destroying to watch, the movie trembles with tragedy. Yet because almost everyone and everything — dialogue, image, setting — is presented in such broad, symbolic strokes, we feel absolutely nothing. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterKeith UhlichSep 12, 2018
Sutton is aiming to make a grand statement about America's downtrodden, and he never lets you forget it. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonFeb 16, 2019
Here is a movie that wants to traffic in Coen Brothers-style nihilism yet lacks any of their storytelling skill. Read full review
25
New York PostSara StewartFeb 13, 2019
If you’re looking for a poverty-porn fix, Donnybrook ought to hit the spot. If not, you’ll likely find this a pointless exercise in gratuitous violence that imagines itself deep because it’s got an opera-heavy score. Read full review
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