Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
Zeitgeist Films | Release Date: February 17, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
76
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
Throughout, Sophie exhibits the quality common to all of history's great martyrs, a preternatural calmness that perseveres despite (or perhaps because of) the inevitability of her doom. Read full review
91
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
It's an authentic, harrowing tale of heroism. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Sophie Scholl plods along inexorably, one step after another, to its grim, sad end. It's almost unbearable. Read full review
88
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
The film is a shattering experience fueled by Jentsch's electrifying performance. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubTasha Robinson
While the film doesn't dig deep, or hit particularly hard, it neatly achieves its modest goals: presenting a real-life heroine in real-life terms. A film this fictionalized rarely feels this much like fact. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Rothemund's use of the recorded testimony, while it gives his film a startling veracity, also limits his imagination. It prevents him from delving too deeply into the psychology of these activists. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Rock solid performances by up-and-coming German actress Julia Jentsch as Sophie and Alexander Held ("Downfall") as Mohr along with an excellent cast of supporting players insure that no one mistakes this for a lifeless docu-drama. Read full review
80
VarietyDerek Elley
An ace performance by 26-year-old Julia Jentsch ("The Edukators," "Snowland"), as the quietly determined Munich student who was beheaded for distributing counter-propaganda leaflets in 1943, gives pic a focused dramatic power. Read full review
80
Village VoiceLeslie Camhi
A life so tragically and quickly extinguished presents maudlin temptations, but director Marc Rothemund ably resists them. His gripping, moving film focuses on a breathtakingly brief five-day period. Read full review
80
The New York TimesStephen Holden
This gripping true story, directed in a cool, semi-documentary style by the German filmmaker Marc Rothemund from a screenplay by Fred Breinersdorfer, challenges you to gauge your own courage and strength of character should you find yourself in similar circumstances. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
It's a crisply made, absorbing human drama that frames its moral confrontation between good and evil in universal terms. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days may sound like a history lesson, but don't be fooled. It's a horror film. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Julia Jentsch strong and graceful, quiet knockout of a performance is the film's most potent weapon. Read full review
80
Dallas ObserverJean Oppenheimer
Though we know the story's final outcome, the trial scene and its aftermath are no less shocking and affecting. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle Smith
Sophie Scholl is a powerful story. But it's a little annoying how men become beside the point when the focus is on emotion. Sophie did no more or less than her brother, but he's ignored for nearly all of the movie because it's easier to stir up compassion - it's easier to manipulate the audience - when the subject is a woman. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Sophie Scholl has a certain quiet dignity that wins its audience popularity honestly. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Sophie Scholl is the subject of a feature film that has earned an Oscar nomination for a Germany she would have loved to live in. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The film holds us rapt not through narrative suspense but through the eerie and demanding spectacle of profound moral courage, of a powerless good person in collision with absolute evil. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
Rothemund gives us his sophisticated filmmaking only in the finale, which is devastating in its briskness and fury. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
The orderly and clean drama is more like theater than history come to life. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Everything about Sophie Scholl screams "martyr" and "saint." Jentsch will have none of it. Hers is a performance of supreme emotional control, yet clear emotional fire. The actress makes the icon human. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The effect of this scene is so powerful that I leaned forward like a jury member, wanting her to get away with it so I could find her innocent. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Julia Jentsch offers a brilliant example of what actors call "not playing the ending," and the awful suspense of the piece is watching as she realizes, in increments, that this is all much worse than she thought. Read full review
70
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
Sophie Scholl is not as devastatingly moving as "The White Rose," but it, too, evokes awe in lesser beings. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Modest in scale but formidable in its impact.
70
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
The script is so intellectualized that I couldn't help feeling I was witnessing not two complex people locked in struggle, but the opposed souls (and classes) of Germany: Sophie, emblem of the cultured, tolerant and enlightened humanism of the middle classes duking it out with Mohr, resentful member of a disenfranchised proletariat from whose ranks sprang Hitler's most loyal quislings. Read full review
70
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Andre Hennicke is particularly chilling as the yappy mad dog judge who sends them to death. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Powerfully rendered in every respect - and another testament to how bad the Nazis are for drama. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
After she's forced to confess, director Marc Rothemund doesn't have much to do but marvel at her heroic defiance, and the film is overtaken by its talkiness, claustrophobia, and polarized morality. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
For most U.S. audiences, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, an Academy Award nominee for best foreign language film, is going to feel more like a history lesson than a movie. Read full review
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