Critic Reviews

• Sandy MacDonald, Boston Globe

  The concept is strong and expertly fleshed out; it's just a pity that Hollywood tropes are allowed to invade.

• John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press

  Beneath the melodrama is an insider's account of the seemingly inconsequential details often edited out of dispatches from the front.

• Tom Long, Detroit News

  The essential message in this strongly felt film comes clear: 'It's Iraq.' It used to be bad, but now it's worse. And anyone in his right mind, including Iraqis, wants to get out.

• Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle

  The Situation' is bound to stir up controversy because of the way Americans are portrayed, and anything that gets people talking and thinking is for the good. It brings the war home, where our soldiers should be.

• Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader

  [Haas'] attempt to convey the tangled relations between sheikhs and insurgents, occupiers and civilians is undercut by Wendell Steavenson's mightily overwritten screenplay.

• Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  There are a half dozen people in colorful supporting roles all of whom have their own truths. And all of whom are far more interesting, as characters and actors, than [Connie Nielsen].

• Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone, TheMovieChicks.com

  I don't think this movie sheds any new light on 'the situation', but it could have, and it's a shame that it didn't.

• Jeff Vice, Deseret News, Salt Lake City

  A pretty lousy movie in general, though it's the film's somewhat accusatory Iraq War subject matter that's getting it some attention -- deserved or not -- that makes the whole thing a little distasteful.

• Mary F. Pols, Contra Costa Times

  It's a credit to the material and the basic plot that even as you're groaning over a clunky speech explaining it all, you're completely focused on what the situation in Iraq actually is.

• Andrea Chase, Killer Movie Reviews

  Bringing the chaos down to very human terms redefines the paradigm for thinking about the occupation, and makes this a film that is more than a mere exercise in action/adventure

• Cynthia Fuchs, PopMatters

  Even as it makes a mucky melodrama out of the war in Iraq, this effect does not seem entirely inappropriate, as it accommodates a U.S. perspective of its own actions.

• Michelle Orange, Reeler

  You want better for this film, but the discomfort it causes is not a matter of it being too soon for the audience, but rather, it seems, for the filmmakers.

• Andy Klein, Los Angeles CityBeat

  His heart is in the right place, and our current situation cries out for a film like this %u2026 like this, but much better made.

• Bob Strauss, Los Angeles Daily News

  It's [Wendell Steavenson] first screenplay, and it shows; while not the movie's only problem, the script is a big one, made up as it is primarily of dialogue that isn't just expository, but clunkily explanatory.

• Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly

  As ambitious in scope as it is interpretively timid, The Situation delivers the requisite incendiary climax, but collapses in on itself with daft speeches about the elusiveness of truth in something called 'the fourth dimension of time.'

Read all 15 critic reviews