The Liberator
Cohen Media Group | Release Date: October 3, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
51
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 12 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
7
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 2, 2014
North American viewers will have one advantage over their South American brethren — the capacity to be surprised. We knew how “Lincoln” was going to end, but The Liberator is a question mark all the way to the finish. Read full review
75
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreSep 30, 2014
The Liberator may be a Cliff Notes version of South American history, but Ramirez breathes life into it and makes us care. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesLorraine AliOct 2, 2014
The admittedly simple premise — that El Libertador fought the good fight, for a worthy cause — is refreshingly escapist. By only briefly addressing the complications of Bolívar's later life as a ruler, it lets us revel in the antiquated notion, if only for a couple of hours, that there are some battles worth fighting. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyOct 3, 2014
A handsomely mounted, never-less-than conspicuously intelligent but ultimately too-conventional historical drama, The Liberator shoehorns the epic life of early 19th-century South American revolutionary Simón Bolivar into two hours of intermittently powerful cinema. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghOct 2, 2014
How disappointing that a movie about challenging authority should be such a slave to convention. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleLouis BlackOct 1, 2014
The film is vast and epic, featuring sprawling rivers, awe-inspiring landscapes, serious military campaigns, and the rich political and ideological history of the period. Still, without sufficient context, the films swirls grandly but without making much meaning. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloOct 1, 2014
It’s an equally fiery, magnetic star turn, but being trapped in a stolid, unimaginative, and simplistic example of the genre — a typical historical biopic, in other words — saps a surprising amount of its strength. Read full review
40
The New York TimesNicolas RapoldOct 2, 2014
Perhaps most impressive are the resources deployed in shooting this production. As if the film’s ostentatious aerial vistas, merely functional scene-writing and score weren’t distracting enough, Mr. Sexton’s dialogue freezes dead any simulation of the period with tone-deaf lines amid Bolívar’s impassioned rhetoric. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJordan HoffmanOct 2, 2014
Even Ramírez cannot liberate this movie from a clichéd script. Read full review
40
The DissolveVadim RizovOct 1, 2014
At best, The Liberator is a commendably old-fashioned affair that goes light on CGI backgrounds and heavy on dazzling scenery. At worst, it’s a reminder of all the extras-heavy would-be epics that got tossed on film history’s slag heap. Read full review
40
Village VoiceInkoo KangSep 30, 2014
Bolivar is eye-rollingly romanticized as a wonderful lover and an even better fighter in Alberto Arvelo's lushly produced, dully reverential The Liberator. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineOscar MoraldeSep 28, 2014
It's sense of complexity is giving us masses of people moved by Simon Bolívar's words, and gorgeous sweeping vistas of the landscape backed by a stirring orchestra. Read full review
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