South of the Border
Cinema Libre Studio | Release Date: June 25, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
45
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 19 Critic Reviews
Positive:
5
Mixed:
10
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Yes, Stone gets cozy with Hugo Chávez, soft-pedaling the Venezuelan president's crackdown tendencies, but he also captures South America in a paradigm shift, wrenching itself free of centuries of colonial control. The film is rose-colored agitprop, but it catches a current of history. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterRay Bennett
Good-humored, illuminating and without cant, Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone's documentary South of the Border is a rebuttal of what he views as the fulminations and lies of right-wing media at home and abroad regarding the socialist democracies of South America. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicKerry Lengel
Offers valuable historical, social and political context, particularly if you aren't an international-news junkie. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
But to be fair, Stone doesn't seem even to think he's offering the last word here. Rather, he's trying to offer the first word, or at least a first opportunity to hear the other side, unfiltered by television media. Read full review
75
NPRBob Mondello
Engaging enough as polemics go, but unlikely to change many minds. Read full review
60
Time OutKeith Uhlich
The aural and visual overload that marks most of the director's work is here in spades--few documentaries look and sound so distinctive. Read full review
60
The New York TimesStephen Holden
As anyone who remembers "JFK," his 1991 film about the Kennedy assassination, can attest, Mr. Stone has his own paranoid tendencies, but they are muted in this provocative, if shallow, exaltation of Latin American socialism. Read full review
58
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Incomplete, shrill and smug. Read full review
55
MovielineMichelle Orange
Though he lavishes praise on his subjects for being hyper-masculine and free-thinking, Stone is downright girlish in his devotion, scoffing at charges made against the leaders rather than examining them. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeEthan Gilsdorf
Three minutes into the film, we feel the sharpness of Stone's ax to grind. It's dull to be told what to think. Read full review
50
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike Scott
Sure, it's an interesting scene as he (Stone) chews the fat with Raul Castro, and coca leaves with Bolivia's Evo Morales. But his South of the Border can't be taken seriously, muchacho -- and if you think it can, well, I've got a primo cigar factory in Havana to sell you. Read full review
40
EmpireAdam Smith
Stone's film could have allowed political voices that are rarely present to get a fair, and critical hearing. Instead he near smooches them to death. Read full review
40
VarietyJay Weissberg
The documentary offers little genuine information and no investigative research, adopting a style even more polemical than Stone's earlier docus on Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Unabashedly one-sided, this biography of Chávez - and several other Latin American politicians - does raise some valid concerns about what Stone calls the "manipulative power of the media." So it's too bad he's as guilty of partisanship as the right-wing outlets he reviles. Read full review
40
Boxoffice MagazineMark Keizer
Stone embarrasses himself by backing the wrong horse and then making a weak case for him. Read full review
30
TimeRichard Corliss
The 70-minute movie -- which was co-written by the British-Pakistani commentator Tariq Ali, author of the 2006 study "Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope," and photographed in part by docu-doyen Albert Maysles -- is amateur night as cinema, as lopsided and cheerleadery as its worldview. Read full review
25
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Stone's film, more an act of boosterism than inquiry, is a tremendous missed opportunity. Read full review
25
New York PostKyle Smith
Stone praises Latin America for turning toward "government of the people" (yet ignores Castro's lack of interest in democracy). But it's no wonder he's in such a sunny mood: We see him grow increasingly giddy while chewing coca leaves with Morales (a coca farmer who wants to make cocaine legal). Read full review
0
Village VoiceKarina Longworth
South of the Border's subjects are masters at cooking bullshit, and Stone just eats it up. Read full review
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