The Kill Team
Oscilloscope Laboratories | Release Date: July 25, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 13 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The PlaylistGabe ToroJul 24, 2014
The Kill Team doesn't saint Winfield at all, instead, smartly casting responsible, impartial questions as to what his options could have been. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comGodfrey CheshireJul 25, 2014
Though this is a story of enormous cultural importance and dramatic power, it’s virtually impossible to imagine today’s Hollywood making a movie about it. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesGary GoldsteinAug 7, 2014
A harrowing picture of the casualties of war — and the unchecked madness that may drive those entrusted to defend us. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'HehirJul 29, 2014
Soberly executed and highly principled documentary filmmaking, tightly focused on the Winfield family’s efforts to navigate the byzantine Army bureaucracy and the ass-covering military justice system. But it’s also a kind of Rorschach test of any viewer’s attitudes about war, the military and the United States’ amorphous 13-year mission in Afghanistan. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJul 25, 2014
The Kill Team, an essential film no matter what your political convictions. The setting is Afghanistan, but it might be Iraq or Vietnam or anywhere with occupying forces. It might be Gaza. This map of hell is timeless, placeless. Read full review
75
Washington PostStephanie MerryAug 21, 2014
The Kill Team is expertly edited, at one point overlaying interviews with the men who participated in the war crimes with B-roll of infantrymen milling about, weapons in hand. And it’s all set to a brilliantly spare and evocative soundtrack. It’s a beautiful way to lose faith in humanity. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChroniclePeter HartlaubJul 31, 2014
The scope of the film can be frustratingly narrow. But even this limited view into the events of the Maywand District murders is gripping cinema. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineChristopher GrayJul 20, 2014
This is a rare War on Terror military exposé, one almost exclusively interested in the hearts and minds of low-ranking soldiers. Read full review
70
The DissolveNathan RabinJul 24, 2014
The Kill Team tells a compelling story, but the 79-minute runtime leaves that story feeling incomplete. Read full review
70
Village VoiceZachary WigonJul 22, 2014
The emotional disconnect between a soldier's perception of reality and reality itself is the subject of this documentary, which finds drama in evenhanded storytelling that is the inverse of its characters' emotional shakiness. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJul 22, 2014
The film is weak on its essential indictment, vaguely suggesting a mood of battlefield boredom without quite pinpointing the pathology that would lead military men to squeeze the trigger pell-mell. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloJul 30, 2014
War is hell, in other words, and punishing these soldiers—and Winfield in particular—for doing what they were taught to do is wrong. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisJul 24, 2014
Mr. Krauss might have served his material better if he had pulled the curtain back in The Kill Team, if only to explain why a movie that initially seems to be about one thing — as its shocker title suggests — is a partisan portrait of Specialist Winfield and his family. Read full review
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