The Wind That Shakes the Barley
IFC First Take | Release Date: March 16, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
82
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
A beautiful film, harrowing, tough and rife with grief. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
Immediately has you in its thrall and doesn't let go -- a reminder of how powerful and moving cinema set in wartime can be when all the elements align. Read full review
100
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
It's unmistakably the work of aging cinema activist Loach, who wears his social-justice heart on his sleeve and pauses the story for lively debates among the characters, especially as Sinn Fein signs a treaty that many think betrays the cause. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Takes a chaotic moment in the long history of "the Troubles" and turns it into a keening, air-clearing epic. Read full review
90
The New YorkerDavid Denby
A sombrely beautiful dream of the violent Irish past. Refusing the standard flourishes of Irish wildness or lyricism, Loach has made a film for our moment, a time of bewildering internecine warfare. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
The history presented in The Wind That Shakes the Barley hardly feels like a closed book or a museum display. It is as alive and as troubling as anything on the evening news, though far more thoughtful and beautiful. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The Wind That Shakes the Barley turns out to be a more complicated, more dramatically potent story than it appears at first. It's concerned at its core not with how bad the British were but with what the cost of dealing with them was for the Irish. Read full review
90
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Loach hurls us into the fracas, circa 1920, and creates such a vivid sense of the nuts and bolts of guerilla war you almost forget you are watching a period piece. Unlike the epic sweep of Neil Jordan's "Billy Collins," which spoke in a syntax closer to Hollywood's, "The Wind" doesn't paint over its political arguments with a patina of nostalgia. Read full review
90
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
Loach's cast fits perfectly, and his directing has his usual extra tang of commitment. He provides almost a sensory response to his material: we seem to feel the textures and scent the air. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Beautifully shot, both in darkened homes and on the misty green Irish landscape by Loach's frequent cinematographer Barry Aykroyd, "Wind" has a you-are-there intensity and intimacy about it that make it nearly overwhelming. But for all its violence and subsequent sadness, it's a movie of extraordinary importance. Read full review
88
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
The vicious clamor the film occasioned in the U.K. is simply the measure of how volatile a subject the relationship between England and Ireland remains more than eight decades after the film's events, and the thinking viewer can hardly help but see parallels between the Irish insurgency and all subsequent guerrilla conflicts. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Gripping, powerful, heart-breaking. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldMarta Barber
The Wind that Shakes the Barley is a multi-layered story, and the more you see those different aspects, the more you'll enjoy the film. Read full review
80
Village VoiceScott Foundas
Like Jean-Pierre Melville's recently rediscovered "Army of Shadows," The Wind That Shakes the Barley possesses the soul of an anti-war movie and the style of a thriller. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Some of Mr. Loach's earlier feature films have been easier to admire than to enjoy. This one, which won the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival, fairly vibrates with dramatic energy.
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
That title would suit a melodrama with an emphasis on doomed love, which is not what Loach has crafted. There is a (chaste) love story and plenty of bloodletting. But what engages him and his screenwriter, Paul Laverty, is the growing tension between brother Irish rebels. Read full review
80
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Director Ken Loach is full of astonishments. An avowedly leftist filmmaker, he has always seen beyond political cant to compassionate reality. He's also incredibly sensitive to what might be called the nuances of life, and he always brings a high sense of spontaneous reality to his films. Read full review
80
Film ThreatMatthew Sorrento
With so many thrills, Loach has completed one hell of a multi-functioning work. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleJosh Rosenblatt
Paul Laverty's script is a masterpiece of ambivalent populism. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
If Loach had given full voice to each side of this division, he could have made a great film -- maybe THE great film -- about the Irish struggle. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
There's a kind of dry tastefulness about The Wind That Shakes The Barley's historical recreations, even when Loach is staging rapes and executions. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Intermittently gripping, but overlong. Read full review
75
PremiereGlenn Kenny
It's a film that approaches greatness and then fumbles. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle Smith
We may not need another IRA movie, but even so, Ken Loach's Brit-bashing historical drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley, winner of the top prize at Cannes last year, raises hard questions about Ireland's uncanny ability to kneecap itself. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
This is a war film with an anti-epic feel, best when it forgoes the forced march of plot to hunker down in the trenches of our flawed humanity. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
The historical scope of this story, as well as Loach's interest in absolute fairness, seems to have drained some of the life from its telling. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
There are moments that stir, and it's always lovely, but it's generally too remote to gain hold of you truly. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
As frequently happens in both Loach films and history, the betrayal of ideals, socialist and otherwise, leaves a harsh aftertaste, which made me feel sadder but not much wiser. Read full review
60
VarietyDerek Elley
Though tastily lensed and with a convincing cast led by Cillian Murphy, essentially small-scale picture lacks the involving sweep of Loach's earlier historical-political yarn, "Land and Freedom." Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterRay Bennett
Atmospheric but pedestrian, it is a retelling of the classic tragedy of all civil wars, from the U.S. to Vietnam to England, where brother is pitched against brother. Read full review
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