Sweet Sixteen
Lions Gate Films | Release Date: May 16, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 25 Critic Reviews
Positive:
25
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Loach is a super-realist, and Sweet Sixteen has the disarming feel of a documentary. It's a film that miraculously catches life on the fly, without apparent embellishment, cliche or melodrama. Read full review
90
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
With unsurprising irony, the "Sixteen" of the title foreshadows Liam's birthday and even worse calamity, which makes a grim and gripping story all the more heartbreaking. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Sweet Sixteen shows that he's (Loach) as capable of anger as his protagonist and just as eager to draw attention to an unchanging problem: the blight of generational poverty. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The explosively combative young hero, Liam (a brilliant performance by Martin Compston), has only the illusion of a fighting chance. Yet Sweet Sixteen is powerful because of the searing honesty with which it strips Liam of his illusions.
90
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
With startling clarity and dreadful logic, Loach and Laverty make sense of every bad choice Compston makes until he runs out of options, locked into a destiny that he can't escape, mainly because his good intentions are clouded by tragic naivete. Read full review
90
Washington PostStephen Hunter
It's a classic story in form, and in this country it used to star Jimmy Cagney. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
It's one of the most emotional and compelling the filmmaker has ever made. Confident, uncompromising and blisteringly realistic, Sweet Sixteen is a gritty and immediate film yet it goes right to the emotions. Read full review
90
Village VoiceJessica Winter
In a remarkably subtle, assured debut performance, Compston evokes Billy in Loach's "Kes" and, in the heartbreaking final seaside shot, Antoine in Truffaut's "400 Blows." Read full review
90
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
I'm not prone to like socially deterministic films of this kind, yet Loach is so masterful at squeezing nuance and truth out of the form that I was completely won over. Read full review
90
VarietyDavid Rooney
Rendered deeply moving by the director's peerless capacity to combine humor and compassion with honesty and despair. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The movie's performances have a simplicity and accuracy that is always convincing. Compston, who plays Liam, is a local 17-year-old discovered in auditions at his school. He has never acted before, but is effortlessly natural. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
It's a beautiful, grim tale. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
It's an uncompromising movie that illustrates one of the most convincing personality transformations that I have seen in a recent motion picture. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Compston's performance and the downer milieu, presented with appropriate paint-peeling profanity, are more than enough to keep an audience riveted and ultimately moved close to tears. Read full review
88
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
In its peak moments, the movie delivers, all at once, genuine street wisdom and psychology and wrenching expressions of family and friendship. Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerPaula Nechak
A hard film to shake and makes us think and think again. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
In the grim and empathetic lost-youth drama Sweet Sixteen, the director focuses on a few failed souls -- rather than excoriate the system that failed them -- to produce a story of particularly streamlined, eloquent despair. Read full review
80
Dallas ObserverBill Gallo
There are no hearts and flowers in Loach's hard-edged world, no kindly interventions, no signs from heaven. Instead, he gives us the unvarnished facts about working-class exploitation and the failure of ambition in low places. Read full review
80
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
It's not a happy film, but there's much incidental, quotidian happiness in it. Like Lynne Ramsay's lovely "Ratcatcher," the movie is far from sentimental about children. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Watching this essentially good but misguided kid slide into a hopeless future is both transfixing and heartbreaking. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Loach has made more memorable films, such as "Raining Stones" and "Ladybird Ladybird," but his dramatic sense remains strong and his social conscience is absolutely unstoppable. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Compston, with Loach's uncanny guidance, gives a performance of such natural power you'd think you were watching a drama-class prodigy like James Dean rather than a moonlighting high-schooler. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
Not for all tastes, but it demonstrates Loach's skill as a poet of gritty semi-documentary filmmaking. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleEdward Guthmann
Martin Compston, the young man-child of Sweet Sixteen, had never acted before, but his combination of sweetness and rage -- part puppy, part pit bull -- gives Sweet Sixteen a shot of reality and a big, aching heart. Read full review
70
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Dabbed with sentimental touches, the film nevertheless avoids facile victim psychologizing and pulls no punches. Read full review
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