While Rosamund Pike delivers an unbeatable portrayal of Colvin, the film itself fails to say anything new about addiction or the demons she battles.

| Feb 22, 2020

Poor, gifted Rosamund Pike is persuaded to play the American-born Sunday Times journo at full throttle, when half-throttle would be a nice occasional variant.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 20, 2019

At a time when pressured media budgets are conspiring, with the general preference for escapism over reality, to threaten war reporting's very existence, A Private War unflinchingly reminds us of its value.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 17, 2019

[An] impassioned if occasionally contrived drama...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 17, 2019

I can only say, with confidence, that the film features a magnificently fierce, alert and impassioned performance from Rosamund Pike, whose usual English rose delicacy is nowhere to be seen. It is top work, properly.

| Feb 14, 2019

Its grindingly earnest tone is that of the hasty posthumous tribute, rather than the more textured, inquiring long view of a worthwhile biopic.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 14, 2019

Packed with fascinating observations on how journalism has changed and how it has stayed the same.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 14, 2019

Pike gives a thoroughly convincing performance as Colvin... As drama, though, it is two-dimensional. The filmmakers are so focused on Colvin that they don't seem to notice anything else.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 13, 2019

The director Matthew Heineman has a background in documentary, and Pike serves as a one-woman answer to the question of why he didn't make a factual piece: her tenacity, swagger and depth are astonishing.

| Feb 13, 2019

A Private War is at its best when it focuses on tension and danger in the field... These scenes land us in the moment unlike much of the more conventional human drama [director Matthew] Heineman builds elsewhere.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 13, 2019

I admired A Private War for its tough, forthright, pro-journalist attitude.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 13, 2019

[Rosamund Pike] more than proves herself a powerfully convincing choice. Edgy, jittery and raw, she seems to channel [Marie] Colvin with an uncanny physical portrayal of a woman afraid of dying young and of growing old.

| Feb 13, 2019

Despite often being hard to watch, this is Rosamund Pike's best work yet.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 12, 2019

Pike creates a portrayal that is full-bodied and full-blooded.

| Nov 20, 2018

It's a powerful but clear-eyed acknowledgment of the importance of journalism.

| Nov 16, 2018

While it occasionally pulls away from Colvin to let the nightmarish inhumanity of war provide power and feeling, it all too often relies on juiced-up expressions of humanist heroism.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 16, 2018

"A Private War" doesn't ask you to understand the politics of war, only the human side. And it shows the toll war takes on people's souls, most of which it never gives back.

| Original Score: A- | Nov 16, 2018

An intelligent and sophisticated biopic with a tour-de-force performance from Pike.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 14, 2018

Despite the undeniably extraordinary feats that Colvin achieved in life and on the edge of death, A Private War is a hagiography that reduces a complicated woman down to trauma, booze, and typing.

| Nov 12, 2018

The most surprising - positively surprising - performance in the film comes from Jamie Dornan.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 9, 2018