Flag Day
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) | Release Date: August 20, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
53
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 24 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
13
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
VarietyOwen GleibermanJul 10, 2021
Even telling the story of this scarred, flawed, barely together family, Penn creates honest notes of nostalgia. Read full review
83
Original-CinLiam LaceyAug 31, 2021
For the power of the performances and what they capture about guilt and family manipulation, Flag Day has a cathartic accuracy in many of its scenes. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawJul 10, 2021
There are some pretty broad emotional strokes here and maybe a fair bit of grandstanding. But it’s made with some style. Read full review
79
TheWrapSteve PondJul 12, 2021
While the film sometimes struggles with disparate tones, it’s a solid, subtle drama that opts in most cases for restraint over excess. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 18, 2021
It’s not an exciting film, and it’s not a film with some wider social relevance. But it’s a film that’s wise about people in a way that’s rare. It also launches Dylan Penn, and someday that will matter. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 18, 2021
In Flag Day, Sean Penn directs himself for the first time and has cast Dylan Penn, his daughter with Robin Wright, as the lead — and the two are absolutely mesmerizing together, beautifully capturing the enormously complicated dynamic between a con man of a father who rolls out of bed with a fresh set of lies ready to go every morning, and an emotionally broken and bruised daughter who knows her dad is a walking bundle of disappointment but wants to believe that this time — this one time — he really has changed. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnJul 10, 2021
The movie has few tricks on offer but above all, delivers a solid reminder of Penn’s filmmaking talent, and welcome evidence that it runs in the family. Read full review
67
The PlaylistCaroline TsaiJul 11, 2021
The Penn father-daughter duo undoubtedly brings an air of authenticity to the Vogels’ relationship, which is wonderful at its best and tragic at its worst. Yet the film as a whole is somewhat of a mixed bag: both a paean for a lost America and an indictment of a modern American reality. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 26, 2021
As a director, Penn knows how to create arresting tableaus that draw the eye and spark the viewer’s own sensory past. As an actor, no one is better at finding honesty in the moment. Like the antihero at its center, the essence of Flag Day remains tantalizingly elusive, potently evoked but never fully realized. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloAug 17, 2021
Thankfully, Flag Day isn’t another disaster, though neither is it anywhere near the vicinity of Penn’s best work. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 24, 2021
Penn the elder has made a movie more concerned with grainy images captured in twilight than pace, more wrapped up in picture-postcard cinematography than a plot that surprises or dialogue that rings true. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyAug 20, 2021
I can’t say how many liberties Penn, working from a script by Jez Butterworth and his own brother John-Henry Butterworth, took with their source material, but the way much of it plays out here feels movie-familiar rather than real-life familiar. Read full review
50
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisAug 19, 2021
Penn gives him a vivid, wheedling desperation that’s weirdly moving, and the younger Penn has clearly inherited the emotional expressiveness of her mother, Robin Wright. Maybe that’s why Flag Day feels as much a love letter from Penn to his own daughter as the story of someone else’s. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyJul 10, 2021
It’s just too bad there’s not more of a personal stamp on the material to rescue it from its indie-film clichés. Flag Day is not a complete misfire, and if a no-name director had made it, the movie would probably get a pass. But considering the emotional stakes involved it’s neither terribly memorable nor moving. Read full review
42
The Film StageDavid KatzJul 12, 2021
A piece of would-be American classicism, this is a hackneyed, unevenly written hybrid between a con-man antihero drama and an emotive, heart-bruised coming-of-age film. Like his last, disastrous effort The Last Face, the good intentions are palpable but chased with a real streak of vanity and self-regard. Read full review
40
Little White LiesMark AschJan 27, 2022
The scenes of Jennifer’s childhood are endless montages, with repetitive blown-out happy-families memories and blatant Terrence Malick ripoffs of the same hand caressing the same strands of wheat from several different angles, and the whole thing is tied together with pretentious and solecistic voiceover delivered by Dylan Penn and surely written by her father as they laboured to salvage the movie in the edit. Read full review
40
EmpireOlly RichardsJan 24, 2022
Far from the best of Penn’s directing work but also not the worst (The Last Face is unlikely to lose that dubious crown). Dylan emerges the most triumphant Penn from a largely boring drama. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternAug 19, 2021
It’s clear what the film means to be—a bittersweet portrait of a daughter’s love for her incorrigible father. But the characters don’t add up. The complexities and nuances that might have brought them fully to life never made it to the screen. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleTrace SauveurAug 19, 2021
Flag Day desperately wants to be an impassioned testament to the lives of both Jennifer and Dylan, but is hardly ever able to escape the myopic lens of its craftsman. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleAug 19, 2021
As it stretches out, it also thins, its Malick-meets-Cassavetes ambitions never rising above clichés of technique and melodrama. Read full review
40
CineVueJohn BleasdaleJul 13, 2021
Of the many problems the film has, it’s the different plots that never quite bounce off each other. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinJul 10, 2021
Dylan and Penn do share a few lovely scenes . . . . In such moments, the project suddenly and charmingly perks up. The rest of the time, ‘flag’ is about right. Read full review
30
Screen DailyTim GriersonJul 10, 2021
The film is so weighed down by self-importance that the proceedings are embalmed in solemnity. Read full review
25
Slant MagazinePat BrownJul 11, 2021
Flag Day is little more than a near-two-hour montage of tear-streaked faces shouting blandly melodramatic lines at each other. Read full review
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