The Wind That Shakes the Barley Critic Reviews

Immediately has you in its thrall and doesn't let go -- a reminder of how powerful and moving cinema set in wartime can be when all the elements align.Read the full review

The history presented in The Wind That Shakes the Barley hardly feels like a closed book or a museum display. It is as alive and as troubling as anything on the evening news, though far more thoughtful and beautiful.Read the full review

The Wind That Shakes the Barley turns out to be a more complicated, more dramatically potent story than it appears at first. It's concerned at its core not with how bad the British were but with what the cost of dealing with them was for the Irish.Read the full review

Director Ken Loach is full of astonishments. An avowedly leftist filmmaker, he has always seen beyond political cant to compassionate reality. He's also incredibly sensitive to what might be called the nuances of life, and he always brings a high sense of spontaneous reality to his films.Read the full review

Some of Mr. Loach's earlier feature films have been easier to admire than to enjoy. This one, which won the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival, fairly vibrates with dramatic energy.Read the full review

There's a kind of dry tastefulness about The Wind That Shakes The Barley's historical recreations, even when Loach is staging rapes and executions.Read the full review

The historical scope of this story, as well as Loach's interest in absolute fairness, seems to have drained some of the life from its telling.Read the full review

If Loach had given full voice to each side of this division, he could have made a great film -- maybe THE great film -- about the Irish struggle.Read the full review

Though tastily lensed and with a convincing cast led by Cillian Murphy, essentially small-scale picture lacks the involving sweep of Loach's earlier historical-political yarn, "Land and Freedom."Read the full review