Michael Winterbottom's The Claim is not your father's Western. It is simply exhilarating.

| Jan 23, 2019

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 10, 2003

The audience is simply left with the task of fitting together the allegory's easy pieces.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 22, 2002

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 30, 2001

Easily the most compelling Western to hit our screens since Unforgiven.

| Jun 11, 2001

A mournful, poetic, epic movie that lodges in the memory.

Full Review | Jun 8, 2001

Takes place against a frigid canvas gorgeously captured by Alwin Kuchler.

Full Review | Jun 7, 2001

A rich emotional experience, ranging in degree from fire to ice.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 4, 2001

True to its source, finding the seed of all great epics in the divisions of the heart.

Full Review | Apr 23, 2001

Though director Michael Winterbottom has impressively created a believable 19th century prospecting town, he is unable to bring the people who live in it to life.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 20, 2001

In returning again to the work of Hardy, the director has chosen the perfect visual metaphor, placing the story in the breathtaking winterscape of the Sierra Nevadas (actually Alberta's Rockies, standing in). .

Full Review | Apr 20, 2001

The mixture of realism and melodrama fails to click.

Full Review | Apr 20, 2001

Moves so freely, evolves so naturally, that it's easy to overlook just how dicey an undertaking it is.

| Apr 20, 2001

The gorgeously photographed winter backdrops that frame the action of The Claim are as much a character as any of the protagonists.

Full Review | Apr 20, 2001

It had to happen. The Claim is a movie whose Web site is far more involving than the movie itself.

Full Review | Apr 20, 2001

The cast is individually intelligent, refined, and understated.

| Original Score: B- | Apr 20, 2001

Both exhilarating and exhausting.

Full Review | Apr 20, 2001

A movie like this rides on its cinematography, and Alwin H. Kuchler evokes the cold darkness so convincingly that Kingdom Come seems built on an abyss.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 20, 2001

It's all there, visually speaking, yet not quite there dramatically.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 19, 2001

A languorously muted, occasionally magnificent film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 19, 2001