Crude (2009)

Critic Reviews

• Dennis Harvey, Variety

  An engrossing case for justice.

• Cliff Doerksen, Chicago Reader

  A gripping, multifaceted thriller about media politics, global economics, and legal infighting. Wherever your sympathies fall, this may teach you a lot about the way the modern world works.

• Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News

  One has to wonder if oil industry executives are concerned about the release of Joe Berlinger's damning documentary.

• Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

  What Crude does best is take us behind the scenes and show in often candid detail how campaigns are waged, tactics decided on and strategies prioritized.

• John Anderson, Washington Post

  As the film very eloquently implies, when the greater good is defined as profits, and a lack of culpability is proportionate to your number of shareholders, well . . . a lot of petroleum-soaked chickens will be coming home to roost.

• Ty Burr, Boston Globe

  At first Crude looks like one more environmental agit-doc intended to outrage and inspire. Director Joe Berlinger is no doctrinaire hack, though.

• Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com

  Another interesting film from Joe Berlinger

• Ian Buckwalter, DCist

  In a welcome change from many recent documentaries with an activist bent, the director is never seen on camera, never heard on the soundtrack, and does precious little overt editorializing.

• Andrea Chase, Killer Movie Reviews

  troubling, enlightening, joyous, and thought-provoking in the best sense of that phrase

• Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall

  This intense documentary tells a hugely important story that's packed with compelling characters and situations. Although a repetitive structure and a sense of agonising futility conspire to undermine the vital lessons it has to teach us.

• Dan Jolin, Empire Magazine

  Not exactly genre-bending innovation or anything but a decent documentary about an important episode in history of oil company exploitation.

• Tom Huddlestone, Time Out

  A bleak, necessarily incomplete tale, and suffers from a late intrusion by celebrity eco-botherer Trudi Styler. But with this gripping, angry film, Berlinger has put himself back on the side of the angels.

• Kevin Maher, Times [UK]

  Although the real-life outcome may be known to some, Crude still, at its best, unfolds like a courtroom thriller.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  The Ecuadorians' fight continues, and their courage isn't to be doubted. Even the much-mocked, much-maligned campaigner Trudie Styler emerges with credit for supporting them.

• Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph

  Structurally a little jumbled, it's still a worthy addition to the angry eco-doc subgenre.

• Olly Zanetti, Little White Lies

  Gripping and powerful, Crude is documentary journalism as it needs to be. Blissful ignorance stirred with bland apathy is no longer an option.

• Carmen Grey, Total Film

  There's much speechifying, with no high-octane finale - but that's near-unavoidable for a case still dragging on amid corrupt politicking.

• David Parkinson, Radio Times

  Berlinger's purpose is not to cheerlead or show Fajardo rubbing shoulders with celebrity activists like Trudie Styler and Sting, but to highlight how easily money can tilt the scales of justice.

• David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]

  While the current trend in documentaries is to take stories and wrap them into neat little packages, Crude runs merrily against the grain.

• Nigel Andrews, Financial Times

  Few of these films ever take solid, substantive slices of truth or attestation from both sides. They are always partial, which vitiates the eagerness with which we would, if we could, espouse the cause of downtrodden.

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