Sumptuous and profound, this is a stunning debut.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 30, 2006

It is hardly the most original story, but Kapadia, the British-born son of Indian immigrants, infuses it so much with stately resonance and spiritual reverence, that it never seems remotely shopworn, much less laborious.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 5, 2005

Long before the end, it takes on the quality of a wise fable and reveals itself as an enriching experience.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 29, 2005

If you can forgive its lapses in storytelling and character development, then Kapadia's 2001 feature filmmaking debut delivers, at minimum, an impressive visual account of a worthwhile spiritual journey.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 29, 2005

A film for moviegoers who love powerful stories and ravishing imagery.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 28, 2005

There's a pinch of Akira Kurosawa, a sprinkle of Clint Eastwood, and heaps of originality in this.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 28, 2005

What is best in the film is its depiction of the warrior's epic journey, photographed with breathtaking beauty and simplicity by Roman Osin.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 28, 2005

The violence is of the high-minded, self-congratulatory sort that indicates without actually showing. This enables macho-but- sensitive cineastes to revel remorselessly in the idea of decapitated heads, sliced necks and severed limbs.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 18, 2005

If you have patience, this is a stately, beautifully composed story.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 15, 2005

The Warrior may be mighty of sword but he is exceedingly limp of writing.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 15, 2005

Asif Kapadia's feature debut is a minimalist but strikingly beautiful tale of renounced violence told with uncommon precision and depth.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 15, 2005

Asif Kapadia's blazing feature debut, a gorgeously photographed saga with a fine sense of the way place shapes personality, has won numerous awards in the filmmaker's native Britain.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 13, 2005

If this moralistic apologue appears a tad too simplistic, at least the pictures are pretty.

| Jul 12, 2005

It's in the larger canvas that the picture ends up short, with an elliptical style that sometimes leaves the viewer bereft of information and a seeming unwillingness to dig deeper into the psychology of its main character.

| Jul 12, 2005

I much prefer the full-throated passion of The Gate of the Sun, but it's to the film's credit that it's able to say so much with very little words.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 22, 2005

The plot is simple to the point of being simplistic, and the characterizations are never more than rudimentary.

Full Review | Nov 14, 2002

Asif Kapadia has scored a tremendous success with this first movie, a substantial, satisfying drama in a telling visual idiom. He is a talent to watch and his film demands to be seen.

| May 13, 2002

Although the plot is over-simplistic, Kapadia sucks us into his exotic world using cinematic magic.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 22, 2002