Despite the heroic exertions of the rafters and filmmakers, this apolitical film is oddly lacking in drama.

| Mar 18, 2010

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 3, 2005

Here are a handful of fairly ordinary people who happen to be from a crippled island with a deteriorating economy, who earn our sympathy just by being themselves.

| Original Score: B | May 18, 2004

Focuses its attention on telling a series of individual, human stories, refreshingly leaving the history lessons for the classroom.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 7, 2004

A movie that shows normal life can be as tough, and as gripping, as rowing across a dangerous ocean.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 7, 2004

Relates such amazing journeys that it's hard not to get emotionally involved.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 24, 2004

A heart-rending account of people trying to dodge the hurdles that politics puts in front of them.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 19, 2004

A seven-year time lapse that's full of drama, poignancy and some heartbreaking moments.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 5, 2004

Hangs on to a sense of hope and promise, even in the face of disaster, that can only come from the people themselves.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 5, 2004

The documentary is remarkable in how it personalized this human tragedy.

| Original Score: B | Dec 25, 2003

Well-done documentary.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 9, 2003

Illustrates the pain and anguish of the 1994 Cuban rafter exodus.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 31, 2003

Poignant, spirited, revealing.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 23, 2003

Despite its unique Cuban elements, Balseros gets much of its power from the way it turns out to be a classic story of immigrants coming to a golden land and finding the streets paved with baser materials.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 2, 2003

Old news for anyone who has seen even one or two documentaries on similar subject matter.

Full Review | Oct 2, 2003

While uneven, occasionally confusing and rough-edged, the documentary achieves a rare depth and intimacy in its portrait of dreams fulfilled and shattered.

Full Review | Jul 31, 2003

Once viewers get to know the balseros as individuals, rather than by a label thrust upon them by desperate circumstances, it's interesting to see how close to -- or far from -- their dreams the American experience takes them.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 25, 2003

Unravels in too many different directions.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 25, 2003

Hats off to directors Carles Bosch and Josep M. Domench for creating this documentary about a complex and important subject.

| Jul 25, 2003

A coherent and emotionally satisfying tale.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 24, 2003