The Grey Zone Critic Reviews

Pitiless, bleak and despairing -- The Grey Zone refers to a world where everyone is covered with the gray ash of the dead, and it has been like that for so long they do not even notice anymore.Read the full review

No dramatic feature has ever come quite this close to the matter-of-fact ugliness of the Nazi crimes.Read the full review

Gives life and meaning to an event that is little more than a footnote in history books (if that).Read the full review

Should be seen: It's a worthy ordeal, with flaws that, ironically, make grist for later arguments.Read the full review

Grimly claustrophobic movies can make viewers put up a shield, yet Tim Blake Nelson (who directed O) invests this unusual Holocaust drama with dramatic intensity that in no way cheapens its subject matter.Read the full review

The atmosphere makes a deeper impression than the drama, which might represent a failing on Nelson's part, but could it be avoided? His film portrays the pinholes of light in a place of otherwise unrelenting darkness.Read the full review

Jagged, unrelenting, claustrophobically intimate.Read the full review

With all its flaws, though, The Grey Zone deserves to be respected, and to be seen.Read the full review

Staccato, Mamet-style dialogue exchanges, breathless pacing and remarkably healthy, well-fed-looking actors create a cumulative sense of artificiality that seriously undercuts the devastating effect clearly being sought.Read the full review