Critic Reviews

• Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

  The opening sections of this film play like a greatest-hits clip collection, but when Gibney delves deeper into Nilan's personality, it's a magnetic portrait of a rinkside Raging Bull.

• Nick Schager, Village Voice

  Gibney celebrates hockey's fisticuff traditions while also recognizing how such brutality ultimately takes its greatest toll on those who perpetrate it.

• Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post

  Gibney deserves credit for making a hockey film that the uninitiated can watch with interest, and for focusing on an issue even some hockey fans can't make up their minds about.

• Nicolas Rapold, New York Times

  Pretty or not, the stories of dropped gloves and smashed faces shed some clarity on the game's violence ...

• Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News

  At his best, Gibney focuses on his subject and then explodes it outward. But with "The Last Gladiators," he's taken a rare misstep. There is undoubtedly a great story within the bruised history of NHL enforcers. Why, though, did he choose Chris Nilan's?

• Sara Maria Vizcarrondo, Movies With Butter

  In a way, this doc is Bully, grown up, and from the bully's perspective.

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

  Even if you're not a hockey fan, Nilan is a modest and insightful guy.

• Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com

  Reflecting the sweep of aggression that swallowed the game throughout the 20th century, Gibney tackles his points smartly, laboring to communicate the thrill of combat and the shock of retirement.

• Christopher Campbell, Film School Rejects

  Gibney, always a master of the documentary interview, gives us another captivating talking head in Chris Nilan.

• Mark Bell, Film Threat

  It doesn't try to sell you on fighting in hockey, it just presents the environment, the personalities, and lets it all speak for itself...

• Kalvin Henely, Slant Magazine

  Makes room for tender moments of reflection from a guy who, against impossible odds, still managed some victories, the biggest of which may be that he's still standing.

Read all 11 critic reviews