It's an impressive, quietly powerful film that will stay with you long after the final credits roll.

| Aug 30, 2018

The film just isn't biting enough to make Warner a mascot for the race-based injustice that pervades the American criminal justice system.

| Sep 26, 2017

The sole fresh twist, one that should have been more than enough to drive the show - one friend dedicating his life to exonerating the other - is repeatedly undermined by their unequal presentation.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 9, 2017

Stanfield deftly balances rage and resignation, and Asomugha is impressive as a crusader who refuses to give up.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 7, 2017

Strong central performances make this harrowing chronicle a gripping tale.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 7, 2017

"Crown Heights" is soul-shaking only in the abstract. In execution, it's deathly dull.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 7, 2017

Stanfield, in a performance of quiet power, fully inhabits Warner's agony at the injustice that is being done to him.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 6, 2017

"Crown Heights" plows forward, steely in its resolve, and forgoes the emotional fireworks in favor of subdued, straightforward storytelling.

| Original Score: B- | Sep 1, 2017

The two men's relationship, and others in the film, might have been explored in greater depth, but Ruskin rightly keeps his focus on the judicial system as it fails Warner again and again.

| Aug 31, 2017

Lakeith Stanfield delivers a breakout performance in "Crown Heights," a dramatized true story of miscarried justice that he anchors with restrained stillness and sensitivity.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 31, 2017

In his second narrative feature directorial effort, Ruskin handles it smoothly and with an eye toward pace, even at the expense of the honest, offhanded moments that can make a galling true crime story such as this come alive on the screen.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 31, 2017

Morally, there's black here, there's also white, but the prevailing color is bureaucratic gray. Bringing that to the screen and making it work is an accomplishment.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 31, 2017

"Crown Heights" has some narrative shortcomings. But the filmmakers respect the subject matter too much to ever take the easy way out.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 30, 2017

An uncaring system putting blameless men behind bars has been a cinematic staple as far back as Alfred Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man" and likely further. But few examples have been as effective as the fact-based "Crown Heights."

| Aug 24, 2017

For a story engineered with such subtlety, reigned by a quiet and thoughtful performance from Lakeith Stanfield, Crown Heights is incredibly forceful in delivery.

| Aug 24, 2017

Yet the film, full of good intentions and compelling performers, fails to find a dramatic structure for its considerable timespan.

| Aug 23, 2017

Crown Heights is a pretty good movie about a great subject: the sheer backbreaking labor necessary to force the system to even acknowledge a terrible injustice, much less make it right.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 23, 2017

Most of Crown Heights ... suffers from structural confusion.

| Aug 22, 2017

Stanfield's performance is the solid foundation for the film.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 21, 2017

A story that is as heartbreaking as it is inspiring, Crown Heights is an especially poignant film in today's times that succeeds in illuminating a perspective that is often overlooked.

| Aug 21, 2017