Avoiding sentimentality and defying expectations, Mangold evokes a subdued brooding atmosphere, weaving a poignant rites of passage tale of wounded lives reaching out for but desperately afraid of change.

| Dec 20, 2023

The performances are strong (my favorite is that of Deborah Harry as an older waitress) and the sense of eroded as well as barely articulated lives is palpable.

| Jun 14, 2022

Super-real, uncompromised, and blazingly homely, Heavy is a movie covered with honest work blisters -- nothing interests first-time writer/ director James Mangold quite as much as simply watching an ordinary person do their job.

| Apr 19, 2022

The movie has a kind of elegance, but it's a very long sit.

| Original Score: C | Apr 9, 2007

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 24, 2007

Showing observational skills, James Mangold has made a quiet, personal film that contests the stereotypes with which Hollywood has portrayed overweight people.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 4, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 4, 2005

Pruitt Taylor Vince will amaze you with his subtle but powerful portrayal of the lovable Victor.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 18, 2005

Features a subtle performance by Vince

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 27, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 25, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 22, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 20, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 29, 2003

Explores the same kind of territory pioneered in the short fiction of Raymond Carver.

| Aug 21, 2002

A slice of life drama that, like the characters it portrays, plods along at its own pace. All the while engaging the viewer.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 1, 2002

Effectively delineates those people whose lives merely exist on the margins of society.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 5, 2002

A small, quiet miracle of a movie in which tenderness, compassion and insight combine to create a tension that yields a quality of perception that's almost painful to experience.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 14, 2001

You've been in places like this. You linger over a second cup of coffee and people-watch, trying to guess the secrets of the sad-eyed waitress and the drunk at the bar and the pizza cook who looks like he's serving a sentence.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Even at 80 minutes, Heavy would have been weighted with redundancies. So you can imagine what happened on the way to making it 105 minutes long.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000