Revolutionary Road
DreamWorks Distribution | Release Date: December 26, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
69
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
9
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
TV Guide MagazinePerry Seibert
Indeed, all of the performers in the film truly shine, and all of them can probably thank Sam Mendes for creating an ideal environment. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This film is so good it is devastating. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The best American film of 2008. Read full review
91
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The results are being billed as a reunion of the "Titanic" star team, but anyone expecting a similarly gushy romantic idyll is in for a shock: it is an uncompromisingly dreary view of two self-deluded people incapable and unwilling to understand one another. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
There isn't a banal moment in Winslet's performance--not a gesture, not a word. Is Winslet now the best English-speaking film actress of her generation? I think so. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Revolutionary Road is a fine motion picture, but it's not a good choice to lighten a burden or brighten a night. It rewards in the ways that only tragedies can. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
DiCaprio is in peak form, bringing layers of buried emotion to a defeated man. And the glorious Winslet defines what makes an actress great, blazing commitment to a character and the range to make every nuance felt. Read full review
88
New York PostLou Lumenick
Winslet (Mendes' wife) once again demonstrates why she's one of the best actresses working today. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The best thing about Revolutionary Road, a cool-blooded and disquieting adaptation of Richard Yates' 1961 novel about a powerfully unhappy Connecticut couple, is that it doesn't end with that rote vision of bourgeois anomie. It only begins there. Read full review
80
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Instead of losing myself in the story, I often felt on the outside looking in, appreciating the craftsmanship, but one step removed from the agony on display. Revolutionary Road is impressive, but it feels like a classic encased in amber. Read full review
80
VarietyTodd McCarthy
A near-perfect case study of the ways in which film is incapable of capturing certain crucial literary qualities, in this case the very things that elevate the book from being a merely insightful study of a deteriorating marriage into a remarkable one. Read full review
80
Film ThreatDon R. Lewis
I couldn't escape the fact that Revolutionary Road seems like a really, really good episode of "Mad Men." There's smoking, drinking, cheating and like the excellent TV show, the lure of a bigger better deal always rules the day. But the film differs in many ways once you get beyond surface appearances. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
As a whole, Sam Mendes' film of Revolutionary Road comes close but falls short of capturing Richard Yates' terrific novel. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Encouraged by Mendes' artful direction, his gift for eliciting naturalness, the core of this film finally cries out to us today, makes us see that the notion of characters struggling with life, with the despair of betraying their best selves because of what society will or won't allow, is as gripping and relevant now as it ever was. Or ever will be. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Fully exploits the drama, with scenes, dialogue, and even key visuals pulled from the text. Read full review
80
EmpireAngie Errigo
Handsomely done and beautifully acted, just slightly wanting in a screenplay that leaves questions unanswered about what's behind these unhappy people. And it's ultra-depressing... Read full review
75
NPRBob Mondello
Director Sam Mendes makes '50s suburbia a persuasively suffocating place — he did the same for '90s suburbia in "American Beauty," remember. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Both director and cast keep the familiar journey intense, but after capturing the death of love in those opening moments, the rest of the film too often feels like a study in dissection. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
It's not quite up to the caliber of Richard Yates' novel, which is deeply nuanced and rich in subtext. But the performances are superb, and the film is beautifully shot. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
However sterling the craftsmanship, the film adaptation inflates the meaning and buffs the atmospheric surfaces of Yates' story, rather than digging into its guts. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
When the tobacco is extinguished what comes between April and Frank Wheeler is bigger, colder and more formidable than the iceberg that sundered Kate and Leo in "Titanic": shattered hope. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Though Revolutionary Road is a less stringent work than Yates's book, it also feels like a more tolerant and humane one. Read full review
70
The New YorkerDavid Denby
There's a sourness, a relentlessness about the movie which borders on misanthropy. In both the social and the personal scenes, the conversational tone veers between idiotic pleasantries and fathomless bile, with nothing in between. Read full review
70
Village VoiceScott Foundas
Revolutionary Road isn't a great movie -- it lacks the full, soul-crushing force of the novel -- but what works in it works so well, and is so tricky to pull off, that you can't help but admire it. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
Shannon is monstrously good – unpredictable where the other actors are clipped and careful – and he steals the whole picture in two short, shattering scenes. When Shannon exits the film, the air gets sucked out again, and you realize the pretty artifice extends to more than just the Wheelers. Read full review
63
PremiereJenni Miller
Revolutionary Road isn't emotionally engaging or moving; it's awfully similar in theme to Winslet's 2006 movie "Little Children." Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Maybe it's a cheap shot to call Revolutionary Road "American Beauty" without the laughs, but it gets to the heart of the problem. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet do exactly what’s asked of them as Frank and April Wheeler, who may be ironically named: They spin emotional wheels constantly but get nowhere. Read full review
60
SlateDana Stevens
It's a textbook example of a well-crafted movie, beautifully shot, impeccably acted, and structured like an elegant three-act play. So why does the movie feel as pleasantly deadening as the midcentury Connecticut suburb where it takes place? Read full review
58
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Mendes has extraordinary gifts, but he has leveled them at the Wheelers like a firing squad. Strangely, he evinced no particular moralizing agenda when making films about the mob or the military. But put ordinary people in his sights and he's venomous. It's unbecoming -- and it should be worked out in private, not in a movie theater. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
In "Virginia Woolf," George and Martha are locked into a symbiotic, disturbingly needy relationship that absolutely feed off their acidic battles. But for Revolutionary Road's Frank and April Wheeler, you wonder: Why don't they just get a divorce? Read full review
50
SalonStephanie Zacharek
This is a movie about two people in pain; the last thing they need is for Mendes to turn his cool camera on them. But that's all Mendes knows how to do. He's a clinical director, and whatever feeling he puts into a movie is measured out in careful quarter-teaspoon increments. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
A sad experience, but the sadness has no emotional heft because its people have none. This movie hasn't earned its funk. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
"Revolutionary Road" is the kind of great novel that Hollywood tends to botch, because much of it takes place inside the heads of its characters, and because the Wheelers aren't especially likeable and because pessimism without obvious redemption is a tough sell. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
An impeccably shot, studiously staged, passionately acted bore, one of those curious fizzles in which everyone seems to do everything right, but the film simply refuses to take off. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
The result is that Revolutionary Road is a hard movie to love. Plenty of people will appreciate the hopelessness, but they might wish for a little less emptiness. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The movie is stifling, all right, and depressing in the bargain. Read full review
38
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Revolutionary Road isn't just a failed literary adaptation. It's a failure of the worst kind: It doesn't even make you want to read Richard Yates' deservedly legendary book. Read full review
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