The Believer Critic Reviews

Bean's commitment to serious theological examination is exciting, Gosling's performance is riveting, and this fiery and imperfect feature shines as a demonstration of independent filmmaking at its most uncompromising.Read the full review

Unique and unforgettable.Read the full review

I confess I don't fully understand Danny's (or the movie's) zigs and zags, but I was glued to the thing anyway -- it has an inexplicable inner logic -- and I admire Bean for refusing to settle into any easy groove.Read the full review

What it's about is also what it requires for proper appreciation -- the ability of the human mind to hold, and even cherish, diametrically opposite thoughts.Read the full review

The film's anti-Semitism is articulate but wrong, and the conflict between what the hero says and what he believes (or does not want to believe) is at the very center of the story.Read the full review

An amazing and incendiary movie that dives straight into the rough waters of contradiction.Read the full review

Admirably ambitious and utterly unsparing, but as credible as the arc of Danny's odyssey is in itself, the all-important need to evoke a profound sense of the enigmatic and paradoxical in relation to Danny's fate has eluded Bean.Read the full review

If nothing else, The Believer trusts that faith can not only withstand a little skepticism, but also gather strength and meaning from it.Read the full review

This willfully provocative film portrait offers lots of raging, vulgarity and shock but little insight into the character's psychopathology.Read the full review