Critic Reviews

• Claude Peck, Minneapolis Star Tribune

  The movie's indictment would be more persuasive had Jarecki recognized that his audience likely already knows most of what he recaps, and can handle the odd scrap of ambiguity.

• Tom Long, Detroit News

  "The House I Live In" leaves you shaking your head in deadened wonder at the waste of it all.

• Dave Calhoun, Time Out

  Tells a complex story with troubling ease.

• Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald

  The House I Live In is a work of journalism, not propaganda: Jarecki has done his research and leaves it to you to decide what to make of it.

• Ty Burr, Boston Globe

  If [it] takes a while to focus, it eventually becomes the conversation starter the subject desperately needs.

• G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle

  Jarecki takes a highly original approach to create a compelling, thought-provoking look at a highly relevant and controversial topic.

• T'Cha Dunlevy, Montreal Gazette

  Somehow, Jarecki pulls it off, circling his subject and revisiting key themes as he constructs the convincing argument that, while the drug war may affect only a certain segment of the population, it's everyone's problem.

• Dan Lybarger, KC Active

  Our search for easy answers to the evils of drugs is an addiction we must wean ourselves from.

• , Scotsman

  A compelling investigation into the roots of America's war on drugs, which has massively increased prison numbers whilst failing to reduce drug abuse.

• Chris Hewitt (St. Paul), St. Paul Pioneer Press

  This fine film makes surprising connections and offers provocative arguments.

• Donald J. Levit, ReelTalk Movie Reviews

  It is the insiders, the prisoners themselves who are most cinema-eloquent, along with a surprising Iowa U.S District Court judge and an Oklahoma corrections center security chief.

• Miles Fielder, The List

  Jarecki's arguments, presented as a very personal response to the war on drugs, are unashamedly those of a left-wing libertarian. They are also enormously compelling and extremely convincing.

• Brent Simon, Shared Darkness

  Suffused with a righteous anger that Jarecki methodically turns up to full boil, The House I Live In is an emotionally shattering work, but also one with a hefty, legitimate intellectual punching power.

• Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

  The ambitious look at the drug problem here offers a too simplistic view that demands a more critical and more inclusive look.

• Robert Roten, Laramie Movie Scope

  What this film argues, pretty convincingly, is that the war on drugs is much worse than a failure. It argues that it is tearing our society apart.

• Jeff Meyers, Metro Times (Detroit, MI)

  Jarecki makes clear that all our efforts and investments in fighting the War on Drugs haven't yielded any real success, only ruined lives, families and communities. There comes a point in any war where it becomes important to ask: Is it worth it?

• Mike Scott, Times-Picayune

  Expertly researched, brilliantly argued and masterfully assembled, it is also easily the documentary of the year.

• Rich Cline, Contactmusic.com

  One of the finest documentaries of the year, this involving film is lucid, sharply well shot and edited, and ultimately so important that it's rather terrifying to watch.

• Philip French, Observer [UK]

  A wide-ranging examination of the futile, self-defeating "war on drugs" ...

• Kate Muir, Times [UK]

  One of the best documentaries out this year, and a must-see for Senate and Congress in America.

Read all 24 critic reviews