The Last Face
Gaga | Release Date: July 28, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
16
METASCORE
Overwhelming dislike based on 21 Critic Reviews
Positive:
0
Mixed:
1
Negative:
20
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
40
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 21, 2016
Penn's film doesn't entertain greatly nor does it have much coherent to say. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJul 27, 2017
This is an astonishingly uninvolving and at times almost laughably melodramatic effort, marred by overwrought voice-over narration from Theron, a relentless barrage of scenes depicting horrific human suffering and a love story featuring one-dimensional characters we don’t particularly care about. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesGary GoldsteinJul 27, 2017
Shedding light on world atrocities is vital, but spelling them out in neon is deadly. Read full review
30
TheWrapBen CrollMay 22, 2016
A spectacularly misjudged mix of humanitarian intentions and gonzo-terrible execution. Read full review
30
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 21, 2016
The film is mostly unmoving, neither the romance nor the social consciousness succeeding in stirring our emotions. Even worse, Penn lets the plight of displaced Africans slip into the background, resulting in yet another well-meaning film that wants to address planetary ills by concentrating our attention on the good-looking outsiders who come in to save the day. Read full review
30
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 21, 2016
The Last Face would have been a better movie if it had an actual screenplay, rather than the bare-bones one credited to Erin Dignam. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireJul 28, 2017
Penn’s own humanitarian work is well-documented, including raising millions of dollars for Haitian relief efforts. Clearly, his intentions here are genuine. But his execution is laughably pretentious. Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedJul 27, 2017
Plotless and leaden as a rusty drainpipe. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJul 26, 2017
A lot of talented people with the best of intentions got together and made The Last Face, and yet it’s an almost unwatchable flop. Read full review
25
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloJul 26, 2017
But that’s nothing compared to the sustained tone-deaf fiasco that is Penn’s latest feature, The Last Face — a movie so monumentally miscalculated, right from its opening explanatory text, that the audience at Cannes, where it (inexplicably) premiered in Competition last year, started laughing at it within the first 30 seconds. All one can really do is gape in wonder and puzzlement. Read full review
25
IndieWireEric KohnMay 21, 2016
Even without its mopey, painfully on-the-nose dialogue and ponderous story, The Last Face sets itself up for failure with its premise, and Penn's apparent inability to recognize it as such. It's his worst movie. Read full review
20
Little White LiesSophie Monks KaufmanDec 1, 2021
If there’s such a thing as conflict-sploitation, then Sean Penn has made a genre classic. Read full review
20
The GuardianBenjamin LeeMay 21, 2016
Nothing about the film comes close to authenticity and it’s largely down to Penn’s remarkably amateurish direction. Read full review
20
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 21, 2016
[A] stunningly self-important but numbingly empty cocktail of romance and insulting refugee porn. Read full review
20
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 21, 2016
Both the festival and filmmakers might have been better off waiting another week, until the screens were empty and delegates had all gone home, before unveiling this thing, perhaps to a slightly less derisory audience of seagulls. Read full review
20
Time Out LondonDave CalhounMay 21, 2016
Sean Penn's pompous, ethically bankrupt humanitarian aid drama The Last Face would surely have worked better as a charity single.... Instead, we get this vain mess, a vacuous romance with real human pain as background noise and where the only honest pleasure is waiting to see what misstep it will take next. Read full review
15
TheWrapClaudia PuigJul 28, 2017
This is about as egregious as filmmaking gets. Read full review
10
The New York TimesGlenn KennyJul 27, 2017
As well meaning as this movie is, it is also a turgid, muddled one. Read full review
0
Slant MagazineDerek SmithJul 25, 2017
The Last Face's shameful exploitation of Africans doesn’t stop with the mere privileging of its two wealthy white doctors and their trivial personal struggles within the narrative. Read full review
0
The Film StageRory O'ConnorMay 21, 2016
The nonsense really is rampant throughout, but the writing is on the wall (quite literally) from the opening introductory paragraph. Read full review
0
The PlaylistNikola GrozdanovicMay 21, 2016
It’s, all told, a preposterous and pretentious mess of a film, and all the good intentions in the world don’t mean anything when the execution is as ham-fisted as it is here. Read full review
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