A Compassionate Spy is a love story as much as it is a history lesson or a spurring of political and philosophical debates.

| Dec 1, 2023

Hall’s story is extraordinary, then, but sadly the telling of it is not, and although it seems fair not to create action and suspense when there really was none, A Compassionate Spy nevertheless fails to fully engage with the enormity of its subject.

| Sep 19, 2023

Even though the documentary would have benefitted from a more unbiased approach, the film is worth checking out as a postscript for “Oppenheimer.”

| Aug 23, 2023

I found it kind of one-sided... It's hard to know what his motivations were, and I wish James explored that more.

| Aug 17, 2023

Very interesting. Some people -- like myself -- would just call this movie "A Spy." But that's okay!

| Aug 17, 2023

A Compassionate Spy is a tender love story. While Ted’s taped testimony provides the whats and the whys for his narrative, Joan’s accounts are the heart of the film.

| Aug 14, 2023

An uncommonly intimate look at the personal impact of the Manhattan Project, one that avoids oversimplification despite its unabashed partiality.

| Original Score: 75/100 | Aug 12, 2023

the effective use of 1940s and 1950s stills, audio, and news reports effectively captures the atmosphere of nuclear frenzy and nuclear dread better than recreated interrogations.

| Aug 11, 2023

Though Ted is the subject of "A Compassionate Spy," the latest documentary from Steve James, Joan is the lifeblood ... Two passionate leftists devoted to each other and the secret they kept hidden for many years.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 9, 2023

Riding the coattails of Oppenheimer, this documentary suffers from a drift into hagiography.

| Aug 8, 2023

Eventually, we get a redundant portrait of a man via a third party, instead of a real sense of him through his own words.

| Aug 8, 2023

This absorbing, thoughtful film doesn’t take sides... Instead, via interviews, film clips and dramatic re-creations, A Compassionate Spy revisits the changing world the Halls passed through together.

| Aug 7, 2023

A mildly engaging and well-edited, but hagiographic documentary that squanders its opportunity to tell its story of Ted Hall, a U.S. spy, in a way that's gripping, moving and insightful enough.

| Aug 5, 2023

The film leaves no doubt Ted Hall was a brilliant man, and that he and Joan had a beautiful marriage. His legacy beyond that remains a subject of intense debate.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 5, 2023

James approaches A Compassionate Spy with a compassionate touch; this is more a profile of a man and a 52-year marriage than a History Channel-style march through events. And it is certainly not an indictment.

| Aug 4, 2023

It is a wonderful documentary, and I encourage everyone who wants a greater sense of the story of the Atomic Age to check it out.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 4, 2023

It’s a complicated narrative, as it should be.

| Aug 4, 2023

The meticulous, intimate documentary registers as a footnote to [Christopher Nolan's] Oppenheimer, but with its more modest ambitions, it achieves greater clarity about the fraught political history surrounding the atom bomb’s creation.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 4, 2023

What’s effective and touching in “A Compassionate Spy” relates directly to the satisfaction of getting to know Joan Hall, a terrifically vital and reflective presence.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 4, 2023

... starts slow before gaining steam as a tense documentary thriller about a complicated man with a checkered legacy.

| Aug 4, 2023