This is a role showcasing Brando’s remarkably effective, quasi-Shakespearean English accent, which snaps his entire performance into shape.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 20, 2024

Euzhan Palcy finds sensibility and optics that allow her close proximity to such delicate territory. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jan 6, 2023

Paicy revamped a screenplay by Colin Welland and succeeded in turning the original Andre Brink novel into a movie that works more than acceptably a a thriller. But the relationships form the heart of the story.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 4, 2023

The cast, clearly dedicated to the project, is uniformly excellent, and there is no sense in the skillfully built, suspenseful flow of the story that this is Palcy's first major feature.

| Jan 4, 2023

[Brando] is absolutely brilliant.

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

Although A Dry White Season is somewhat mechanical in the early scenes, Palcy's personal sense of outrage is so strong it ultimately transforms the movie into a stinging indictment of apartheid rule.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 4, 2023

It does justice to its "message" by being an excellent movie. Being devastating is one thing; being relevant is something else. A Dry White Season uses its creative and fictional devices to achieve a degree of truth rare on any sort of screen.

| Jan 4, 2023

Here, with a larger budget and stars in the cast, [Palcy] still has the same eye for character detail. This movie isn't just a plot, trotted out to manipulate us, but the painful examination of one man's change of conscience.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 4, 2023

A Dry White Season unravels when it opts for a wrap-up-the-loose-ends thriller finish, but there's no faulting the level of acting or the level of commitment.

| Jan 4, 2023

A Dry White Season is oddly flat in its overall impact, but the validity and value of the film are beyond question.

| Original Score: B- | Jan 4, 2023

The African actors lend substance and authenticity, especially Zakes Mokae as Sutherland's underground helper and Winston Ntshona as the slain boy's father.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 4, 2023

From one vantage point, A Dry White Season is a conventional protest movie. But it is hard to remain unmoved by the power and impact of its message.

| Jan 4, 2023

A Dry White Season fires a shot right between the eyes of South African apartheid. The new movie is a thriller, but it's also an education.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 4, 2023

A Dry White Season is one of those rare films that manages to combine potent social commentary and gripping suspense in a package that is simultaneously engrossing, unnerving and undeniably provocative.

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

The focus is firm and uncompromising.

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

A Dry White Season is often heavy-handed and as shrill as a bird in a cage. But it will never be shown in South Africa. It deserves attention for that reason alone.

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

Never less than competent and honourable, and certainly moving.

| Jan 4, 2023

Palcy's narrative drive and the phenomenal editing (by Sam O'Steen and Glenn Cunningham) make the story so kinetic that we accept its simplifications. A Dry White Season may wear its heart on its sleeve, but at least its pulse races.

| Jan 4, 2023

It's not easy to recommend a movie that shows the cruel, cold-blooded murder of young children and the brutal torture of innocent men. But a recommendation is exactly what A Dry White Season deserves.

| Jan 4, 2023

A rallying cry to the converted, delivered so lifelessly it is unlikely to move either them or the unconverted.

| Jan 3, 2023