Flag Day refuses to ponder challenging ideas but still wants its viewers to be moved.

| Jul 27, 2023

A drama with little dialogue, lots of music and too much screaming, and bogged down by Penn's directorial toolbox... full of commonplace American indie clichés from the last three decades. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jun 16, 2022

It is as if Penn has taken all the worst tendencies of all the directors he's worked with over his lauded career (including his own worst instincts) and crammed them all into one film, one in which he gives yet another undeniably fantastic performance.

| Original Score: 4/10 | May 10, 2022

Flag Day comes across as a passion project to simultaneously boost Sean Penns profile whilst bonding with his daughter, but only the former comes across on screen.

| Mar 2, 2022

Penn’s clumsy and confusing melodrama -- though well performed -- occasionally resembles a music video.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 4, 2022

Sean Penn, who also directs, plays the father and casts his own real-life daughter, Dylan Penn, as the daughter. The actor being most indulged, however, turns out to be himself.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 31, 2022

While Dylan's charismatic, pared-down performance reminded me of her actress mum Robin Wright, Penn just reminded me of his shouty, showy self.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 31, 2022

The Penns give committed - and in Dylan's case exposed - performances.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 30, 2022

If there was any sort of family therapy involved in the Penns' work here, it has no interesting effect on what we see.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 30, 2022

It's not a bad film, with faint echoes of Peter Bogdanovich's 1973 classic Paper Moon and a soundtrack of plaintive road songs that will either get your feet tapping or set your teeth on edge.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 28, 2022

Sean has powerful, painful scenes with Dylan, who is the spitting image of her mother, Robin Wright, and has inherited some of her poise too.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 28, 2022

That Penn doesn't want to make a straight crime thriller is laudable - less clear is what he wants to make instead.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 27, 2022

Penn uses elliptical editing, Terrence Malick-style camera work and ornate voice-over to make it seem more profound than it really is.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 27, 2022

...heartfelt and honest as a Bruce Springsteen song, Flag Day is a genuine return to the early directorial form of The Indian Runner and The Crossing Guard for Penn...

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 26, 2022

Far from the best of Penn's directing work but also not the worst (The Last Face is unlikely to lose that dubious crown). Dylan emerges the most triumphant Penn from a largely boring drama.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 24, 2022

Sean Penn and his daughter Dylan impress in the lead roles in this grim true-life drama, based on Jennifer Vogel's 2001 book about her uneasy relationship with her conman father.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 20, 2022

The film suffers from nearly all sensory 'Malickian' cinematic vices . [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 12, 2022

While [actor-director Sean Penn] is especially good in the interactions with his daughter, he also lapses into proud dad behind the director's chair, perhaps a little too indulgent with camera time on Dylan. She is, though, destined for stardom.

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 22, 2021

Everything is intense and obvious in this parallel journey of a father and a daughter in a dramatic search for peace with themselves. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 20, 2021

There's not much here to cling on to, and maybe Sean [Penn] should really think about directorial retirement.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 9, 2021