Walkabout
Twentieth Century Fox Film Company | Release Date: July 1, 1971 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
85
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Walkabout is a superb work of storytelling and its material is effortlessly fascinating. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Roeg’s film contrasts Western corruption with native goodness, but it’s naïve by design, and ultimately concerned more with the way all innocence passes than with the politics and particulars of any single part of the world. Read full review
100
EmpireKim Newman
It's a deep film, but also elusive, accepting that some mysteries can never be solved. Read full review
100
Paste MagazineAndy Beta
It’s a commentary on unresolvable conflicts between races, cultures, generations, sexes; a vision that is at once primal and sophisticated. When the film circles back at the coda, we realize we’ve just traversed a brutal—yet flawless—cinematic landscape. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
One of the most original, visually stunning, and provocative films of the 1970s, Walkabout is timeless in its beauty and unique approach to a classic coming-of-age story. The film is arguably director Nicolas Roeg's finest achievement. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneJohn Petrakis
The transition from cinematographer to director can be a bumpy ride, but few have navigated it as well as British filmmaker Nicolas Roeg. [08 Mar 2002, p.C6]
100
USA TodayMike Clark
With gorgeous Australian outback photography and minimal dialogue co-defining it as "pure" cinema, Nicolas Roeg's masterpiece was once designated by Premiere magazine as its "most wanted" movie on video. [04 Apr 1997, p.3D]
91
Entertainment WeeklyChris Nashawaty
Nicolas Roeg’s art-house adventure is lyrical and intoxicating. Read full review
90
The GuardianLuke Buckmaster
Roeg revels in the hallucinatory, creating a wilderness that exists as much in the mind as it does the land. Read full review
80
Village VoiceKenneth Geist
A richly picturesque, multi-leveled film. [20 May 1971, p.66]
80
The TelegraphPatrick Gibbs
Beautifully done, I think, with a completely appropriate and consistent style. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
For the most part, Walkabout is an involving, occasionally hypnotic, motion picture. Some of the photography, including images of the outback and its denizens, is spectacular. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleEdward Guthmann
A strange, vivid tale of two British schoolchildren stranded in the deserts of the outback. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineEd Gonzalez
Roeg shoots every figure in the film like an instructional visual subject, and it levels the philosophical playing field—whether man, or ant, or echidna, or gnarled tree stump, they’re all fodder for the experimental interplay of light, shadow, and space. Read full review
70
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
The shimmering light and colour, the conflict of cultures, and the emergence of semi-mystic sexual forces in the desert landscape make this as Roeg-ian a film as The Man Who Fell to Earth or Bad Timing. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Roeg's points about the contrasts between noble savages and civilized effetes don't stand up terribly well over time. Read full review
40
TimeStefan Kantner
Roeg and his scenarist Edward Bond (BlowUp) aim for the mind and miss wildly. Their preachy, anti-intellectual Natural Mannerisms are neither convincing nor new. Read full review
40
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
Roeg's bag is photography, but pretty pictures alone cannot sustain - and, in fact, inhibit - this fragile and forced screen adaptation of a James Vance Marshall novel. Read full review
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