The Beautiful Country Critic Reviews

It is a straightforward, conventional narrative, charting seemingly endless cruelty and hardship, but rewards the patient with an eloquent climactic sequence that is impossible to predict.Read the full review

The film achieves its power through a careful gathering of crucial details, in wordless glances, cruelties of nature and of man and the relentless determination to gain the promised land.Read the full review

The filmmakers bank against their impulse toward melodrama and deliver a reconciliation that is heartbreakingly understated.Read the full review

The Beautiful Country might be too slow-moving for some, but it has powerful performances and a multi-layered quality. It is an epic journey worth taking.Read the full review

Inside the Norwegian director's glove of empathy is a fist of unappeasable anger.Read the full review

Standout performance is by Nolte who, in the final 20 minutes, draws on a deep reservoir of playing broken romantic heroes to portray Binh's father. The subtle, resonant scenes between the two men are worth the price of admission.Read the full review

It is hard not to admire the independence and ambition of The Beautiful Country, even if the film does fall short of its epic intentions.Read the full review

A gorgeous film, framed with an eye that makes every country seem beautiful in one way or another. It's probably fitting that the human element seems fragile and flat by comparison, but the contrast leaves Beautiful Country fairly bland.Read the full review