The Reader
Weinstein Company, The | Release Date: December 10, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
17
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
PremiereJenni Miller
Winslet deserves an Oscar for her amazing performance. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubTasha Robinson
Kross and Winslet's intense performances and Daldry's deliberately placid control of tone make the material work as a love (and hate) story as well as a metaphor. Read full review
91
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The Reader is significant because -- like another film opening today, "Valkyrie" -- it asks us to see not just the Jews but the whole German people as victims of the Holocaust, and to view Nazism as more a product of explicable ignorance than inexplicable evil. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The crucial decision in The Reader is made by a 24-year-old youth, who has information that might help a woman about to be sentenced to life in prison, but withholds it. He is ashamed to reveal his affair with this woman. By making this decision, he shifts the film's focus from the subject of German guilt about the Holocaust and turns it on the human race in general. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
There is a sense of ambiguity at the core of The Reader that makes it all the more brutal, all the more honest in its deflowering of love and what one imagines love ought to be instead of what it too often is. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The Reader is closer to a near miss than a rousing success but, on balance, this is still worth seeing for those who enjoy complexity and moral ambiguity within the context of a melodrama. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Winslet's fierce, unerring portrayal goes beyond acting, becoming a provocation that will keep you up nights. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Though the effort is uneven, it's a well-acted romance that becomes a less compelling courtroom drama. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Fiennes brings to the role a shimmering subtlety. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
With this film Daldry, previously the director of "Billy Elliot" and "The Hours," proves himself the screen's reigning master at showing passion thwarted or repressed. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
An immaculately crafted, splendidly acted drama with a message at its core of forgiveness and humanity. It's also blatantly manipulative, and, upon reflection, rather banal. In other words, it's the epitome of Oscar bait and almost serves as a step-by-step guide to creating such a beast. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
This coming-of-age portion is the less interesting half, though it has the more interesting Michael. We have seen Fiennes play an emotionally detached introvert so often that he brings nothing new to the role, apt though he is. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
An engaging period drama. But German postwar guilt is not the most winning subject matter for the holiday season. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
It is only, frankly, the strength of Winslet's performance that rises above conventional surroundings and makes The Reader the experience it should be. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
The revelation that Winslet’s character is a war criminal is the centerpiece of The Reader, but surrounding the Holocaust morality play is another story that’s more modestly scaled and, in this age of unashamed romance between older women and younger men, more contemporary. Read full review
70
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Bernhard Schlink's highly regarded novel "The Reader" receives a graceful, absorbing screen adaptation by director Stephen Daldry. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
The film is notable for its nice performances, its handsome photography, and its very active music. If the preceding praise sounds generic, so is the movie. Read full review
63
New York PostKyle Smith
Although the script works in a couple of pages of collegiate-level ethical debate about "the question of German guilt," what the movie is really interested in is the question of German sex. So think of it as "Schindler's Lust." Read full review
63
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
The Reader doesn't do enough to explore the guilt and betrayal the adult Michael feels over the acts of his elders. Read full review
60
NewsweekDavid Ansen
The Reader can feel stilted and abstract: the film's only flesh-and-blood characters spend half the movie separated. But its emotional impact sneaks up on you. The Reader asks tough questions, and, to its credit, provides no easy answers. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
Provocatively intentioned, The Reader is a movie worth seeing - the kind of film you'll think about for days afterward. But when all is said and done, you're likely to wonder why the impact wasn't greater still. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
The film is neither about the Holocaust nor about those Germans who grappled with its legacy: it's about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The cast is superb: especially Kate Winslet, who transcends, by far, the limits of her character's narrow soul. Yet The Reader remains schematic, and ultimately reductive. Read full review
60
EmpireKim Newman
The epitome of middle-brow 'quality' drama -- admirable within its limitations, but Bernard Schlink's Oprah Winfrey Book Club-approved book wasn't exactly literature, as this isn't exactly cinema. Read full review
50
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Stephen Daldry's film is sensitively realized and dramatically absorbing, but comes across as an essentially cerebral experience without gut impact. Read full review
50
Village VoiceElla Taylor
Like many narrative filmmakers who walk on their tippy-toes when dealing with the Holocaust, neither Daldry nor Hare seems eager to make the material his own. Read full review
50
SalonStephanie Zacharek
The Reader feels weighty, all right; but it's an unsatisfying kind of weight, and Fiennes' presence, as the grown-up Michael, doesn't help much. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
So why, despite everyone's best efforts, does all this bigness seem so small and unfocused and simply not up to the task? Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
A film made with high aspirations and more than the usual commitment but one that, after an arresting beginning, changes into a passive rumination. Read full review
50
TimeRichard Schickel
Faithful both to the novel's plot and to its higher aspirations. This is not an entirely good thing. On the other hand -- and somewhat surprisingly -- it is not an entirely bad thing. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Can a formidable actress redeem a pile of solemn erotic kitsch? Kate Winslet answers that one as honestly as she can in the film version of Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel "The Reader." Read full review
50
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
After a sensuous introductory act, The Reader descends into a series of dismaying contradictions regarding the moral toxins of the Holocaust - which still pollute postwar Germany. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
The Reader is ponderously self-important and smugly Socratic, brimming with unfinished sentences and pregnant pauses; if a single character would only say what he thinks, the movie would be over in 30 minutes Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineJason Buchanan
Whether the source material or Hare's tinkering is to blame for the fact that the story keeps the viewer at arm's length, the end result is still the same: A film that's technically superb, yet still falls short of true greatness. Read full review
40
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
For those who think of cinema as dramatic roughage, The Reader should prove sufficiently indigestible. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
It appears that the filmmakers have taken Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil" way too literally. Read full review
20
SlateDana Stevens
Slow-acting poison. For the first third of the movie, you'll experience a not-unpleasant tingling in the extremities, giving way to an encroaching torpor. An hour in, your pupils will have shrunk to pinholes, and by the time the closing credits roll, you'll be capable only of a dim longing for the defibrillation paddles. Who would have thought a movie about a beautiful, frequently naked female Nazi could be so dull? Read full review
10
Film ThreatMatthew Sorrento
The shallowest "serious" film to be reeling this year. Read full review
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