The real surprise is Brosnan's silent, agonized performance; his post-007 career has been one long campaign to prove he's got the goods.

| Jan 3, 2011

Overwrought in all the wrong ways, The Greatest doesn't do its normally excellent cast any favors.

| Original Score: C- | Apr 16, 2010

A meditation on loss by a writer-director whose honesty, sensitivity and intelligence more than mitigate the film's histrionic qualities.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 16, 2010

Two gifted young women whose best work will be in other films are the reason to see this one.

| Original Score: B- | Apr 15, 2010

A well-performed tearjerker of the kind that mostly transcends its melodramatic set-up to become something genuinely moving.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 9, 2010

Sarandon and Brosnan are very good, indeed, Brosnan surprisingly so. In fact, Brosnan has never been so opened up, so emotional and yet so precise in his work. It's a lovely performance in a film that only sometimes deserves him.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 8, 2010

Though it sometimes feels more like a collection of scenes than a complete story, some moments are so raw and insightful that they feel like a punch to the heart.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 8, 2010

What makes The Greatest work so well is that Feste clearly remembers what it's like to be 18 and to believe your one chance at joy has passed you by.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 8, 2010

Do not mistake The Greatest for a movie about Muhammad Ali. And do not think its ambitious title indicates its overall quality.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 8, 2010

It's earnest and grueling and gently contrived, and it lets several good performers play at repressing their feelings before letting them rip in jagged arias of Acting. I wanted to like the movie more than I did; your mileage may vary.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 8, 2010

The Greatest includes a great performance and a very good one at the center of vagueness and confusion.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 8, 2010

Although The Greatest is a histrionic mess, at least it looks clean.

| Original Score: c | Apr 7, 2010

I think that the performances and also the kind of relaxed style of direction kind of make this watchable.

Full Review | Apr 5, 2010

Any good actor's career involves a certain amount of toning-up of questionable material, adding dimensions where they're barely suggested on the page. That's what Mulligan is doing here.

Full Review | Apr 5, 2010

The movie suffocates as scene after shouty scene delivers nothing except yet another variant of the notion that it's a bummer to lose a loved one.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 2, 2010

Dignity dies a million deaths despite the best intentions.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 2, 2010

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 2, 2010

Not even the skillful performances of its stars, Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan, playing the boy's parents, can cover up the mysterious gaps in continuity of a screenplay whose thudding dialogue spells out every emotion.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 2, 2010

It's when the small moments become large ones that Feste overreaches and the shaky performances don't bail her out.

| Original Score: C | Apr 2, 2010

It is a potentially treacle-filled and melodramatic waste of time that thankfully is anything but, the film instead an emotionally charming winner that moved me to honestly earned tears I was beyond happy to be having the pleasure of shedding.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 1, 2010