Rust and Bone
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: November 23, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
73
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
33
Mixed:
5
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 20, 2012
Turns out to be one of the most transportingly romantic movies of the year, one that finds the most stirring emotion in struggle rather than in ginned-up melodrama or easy resolution. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 20, 2012
The narrative at the heart of Rust and Bone is a vehicle for sentiment and over-the-top histrionics if ever there was one, but Audiard and his two stars deliver the exact opposite: a film thrillingly raw and essential, life-affirming, sublime. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 6, 2012
Romantic but pitiless, fearlessly emotional as well as edgy, Rust and Bone is a powerhouse. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirNov 23, 2012
One of the year's best films precisely because it can't be boiled down to a message or synopsis. It's an exercise in style that risks trashiness in search of transcendence, and it's a sizzling celebration of the power of music, the power of images, and the electric, destructive power of the human body. Read full review
91
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthNov 21, 2012
By the picture's knotty finale, in which Audiard navigates a late-stage twist with ease and emotion, you know you are in the hands of a master who is directing with the confidence and command that few possess. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony LaneNov 26, 2012
Rust and Bone might as well be called "Water and Light"; it glitters and flares with the urge to renew those things - limbs, knuckles, lovemaking, and parental bonds - which are easily fractured and lost. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottNov 23, 2012
Rust and Bone is a strong, emotionally replete experience, and also a tour de force of directorial button pushing. Mr. Audiard is a canny showman, adept at manipulating the audience's feelings and expectations with quick edits and well-chosen songs. Read full review
90
NPRStephanie ZacharekNov 23, 2012
Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone is an unapologetic melodrama rendered in what you might call semi-stylized neo-expressionistic realism, and it works like gangbusters. Read full review
90
Boxoffice MagazineJames RocchiNov 21, 2012
What Audiard has created here is nothing less than the rare combination of high art and beautiful filmmaking with visceral power and gut-level emotional reality - it's like a symphony of fists, or a brutal assault by angels. Read full review
90
MovielineLorien HaynesSep 12, 2012
Physically it is a kick in the teeth, a depiction of poverty, sex and violence which crosses most known codes of acceptability. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonJan 11, 2013
A film that's all the more intriguing for being virtually impossible to categorize. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianStan HallJan 10, 2013
Audiard's craft is still arresting, and the film hums with beauty, vigor and blood. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnNov 23, 2012
While its main characters are tough-minded, Rust and Bone is itself pure heart. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 20, 2012
A satisfying story of yearning and, eventually, satisfaction. Read full review
80
Time OutDavid FearNov 20, 2012
Lyrical touches and the most moving use ever of Katy Perry's "Firework" almost cancel out a cheap-shot third-act tragedy, yet it's the actors that save the film from soaping itself into Euro-miserablist irrelevance. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 12, 2012
What could have been simply bizarre, sentimental or contrived here becomes an utterly absorbing love story. Read full review
80
TimeRichard CorlissSep 12, 2012
Sometimes engrossing, sometimes exasperating romance. In these scenes, Cotillard shows she doesn't need the validation of Cannes or the Academy. Her strong, subtle performance is gloriously winning on its own. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJan 23, 2013
The filmmaker has created a haunting movie, one that connects on a visceral level that defies easy explication. The unembellished performances by Cotillard and Schoenaerts exude a raw authenticity that anchor the film's grander melodrama and embed the characters in the viewer's memory. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenDec 20, 2012
By turns brutal and tender, Rust and Bone is a bullet train of heightened melodrama that refuses to derail. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 20, 2012
A tough movie about tough people for a tough audience. So prepare to get roughed up a little. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 20, 2012
The leads save it, particularly Cotillard, who once again subverts her own glamour with ferocious lack of ego. The movie itself only occasionally matches her intensity. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversNov 20, 2012
Writer-director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet) probes the psyches of two people in crisis. His hypnotic film means to shake you, and does. Schoenaerts reveals unexpected layers in Ali. And Cotillard delivers a tour de force of unleashed emotions. She's astonishing. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloSep 12, 2012
Both actors are tremendous - especially Schoenaerts. Read full review
70
SlateDec 6, 2012
Rust and Bone is a movie about letting go of shame and making way for the advent of pleasure. Let that be your guide to watching it as well. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNov 21, 2012
Rust and Bone doesn't come together, but it's a triumph of non-actorish acting. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthySep 12, 2012
Absorbing if somewhat predictable in its dramatic trajectory, Jacques Audiard's follow-up to his powerhouse prison yarn "A Prophet" benefits from unvarnished, forthright performances from Marion Cotillard and Bullhead hunk Matthias Schoenaerts, as well as from the utterly convincing representation of the former's paraplegic state. Read full review
70
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 12, 2012
A tender yet heavily de-romanticized love story between a boxer with broken hands and an orca trainer with missing legs, Rust and Bone serves as an impressive if somewhat overblown exercise in contrasts. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 7, 2012
Rust and Bone is made by filmmakers and actors who are capable of much more – and they know it. The result is a true oddity: an orgy of hokum dressed up as an art film. Read full review
63
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreJan 30, 2013
Rust and Bone doesn't earn the ending it delivers. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldConnie OgleJan 11, 2013
The movie wanders off course in the final act, as if none of its three screenwriters could quite figure out how to end it. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 6, 2012
This gritty examination of physical and psychological wounds offers a superb performance by Marion Cotillard, who speaks volumes with her eyes, and a less convincing one by her lead co-star. Read full review
63
ObserverRex ReedNov 20, 2012
Proving again that her Best Actress Academy Award for playing Edith Piaf in "La Vie en Rose" was no fluke, the marvellously sensual Marion Cotillard, with her wounded doe eyes and look of permanent unfulfilled longing, delivers another kidney punch as a double amputee in love with an illegal bare-knuckle fighter in the French shocker Rust and Bone. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineJesse CataldoNov 16, 2012
It runs a complicated bait and switch on its audience, passing ostensible exploitation fodder through a high-toned prestige filter. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJan 18, 2013
Rust and Bone is somber and gritty if nothing else, a movie that takes itself very, very seriously, even as it struggles at times to find its focus. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 6, 2012
Why are certain films less than the sum of their appealing parts? Read full review
50
New York PostKyle SmithNov 21, 2012
The visual effects are amazing, but they don't make up for acting that is restrained to an uninsightful fault. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanNov 20, 2012
Cotillard, with stringy long hair and a coal fire of severity in her eyes, has what it takes to play a woman who feels that she's lost everything. But she's forced to flail and mood-swing from scene to scene. In an insult to the disabled, there is never much to her but her hellacious injury. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierNov 23, 2012
Though Rust and Bone aims for a blasé attitude toward disabled drama - in a far more artificial way than another French film, "The Intouchables," did earlier this year - it's underwritten characters and hoary approach plunk it into mediocrity. As wheelchair-bound Stephanie practices her whale-training motions to Katy Perry's "Firework," it's eye-rollingly obvious. Read full review
30
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonNov 20, 2012
Audiard himself might have benefited from a simple reminder of left from right; his rudderless film confuses a pileup of preposterous, sentimental scenarios with genuine emotion. Read full review
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