Critic Reviews

• Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

  Only intermittently effective despite its powerful subject matter.

• Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

  Rarely has the gulf between relevance of subject matter and ineptitude of execution been greater than it is in Ezra.

• Gene Seymour, Newsday

  Since the movie, however infuriating, is a plea for mercy, the audience is compelled to forgive Ezra its often jittery and confusing overlaps.

• Stephen Holden, New York Times

  Ezra is a scorching portrait of an African child who is kidnapped and turned into a soldier for a rebel militia.

• V.A. Musetto, New York Post

  An intelligent, if raw, work.

• Andrew Sarris, New York Observer

  The film is awash with good intentions, and the actual atrocities are vividly depicted and chilling... but the film loses its momentum when it attempts to analyze the evils of poverty, anarchy and violence.

• Nora Lee Mandel, Film-Forward.com

  Less a catalog of horrors than how a child soldier and his community can pick up the pieces after war, with fictionalized sentimentality, but powerful and passionate

• John P. McCarthy, Boxoffice Magazine

  Clear-eyed and without aiming for the emotional jugular, Ezra goes well beyond geography, politics and ethnicity... to explore the psychological toll on young people caught in violent situations not of their making and beyond their understanding.

• Benjamin Sutton, New York Press

  A taut film detailing the psychological warfare used to control child soldiers who fill the ranks of rebel armies in Africa.

• Ken Fox, TV Guide's Movie Guide

  Newton I. Aduaka's comprehensive account of an African nightmare covers a lot of important ground, making this flawed film worth seeing.

• Eric Monder, Film Journal International

  Despite some strategic errors, director Newton I. Aduaka uses documentary techniques to inform a challenging and disturbing subject.

• Chris Cabin, Filmcritic.com

  borders on being something immensely powerful, and then, as if shy or ashamed of its promise, flips its wig and falls back on convention.

• Donald J. Levit, ReelTalk Movie Reviews

  'Ezra' moves, and is smart enough not to endorse empty enthusiasms or slogans.

• Nick Schager, Slant Magazine

  The script's flip-flopping between the past and present is so clunky and unfocused that confusion often reigns, thus undermining any clear portrait of its subject.

Read all 14 critic reviews