The story is played like a litany or a medieval morality play. Shot after shot bears the hypnotic power of ceremony rather than drama.

| May 20, 2022

Mystical, obscure and ineffably beautiful, Tian Zhuangzhuang's film is almost certainly the most alien movie that will play Los Angeles this year. Take that as a strong recommendation and an equally strong warning.

| May 20, 2022

A superbly filmed Chinese saga set in forbiddingly beautiful country in and around Tibet.

| May 20, 2022

The film is slow and not above a certain ponderousness, but its visuals are so beautiful and its authenticity seems so thorough that one remains hooked from start to finish.

| May 20, 2022

It is the sort of film that exposes the viewer to a completely unfamiliar and often-fascinating time and place. With the precise observation of an anthropologist, and the lyricism of an artist, director Zhuangzhuang presents a series of memorable images.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 20, 2022

All Horse Thief amounts to is "Taras Bulba" pictorialism -- and melodrama -- put at the service of an ethnographic survey of Tibetan Buddhist customs.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 20, 2022

Whatever else the movie means to signify, it’s memorable as a personal vision of a people whose hold on life is precarious and who sustain themselves with faith in an afterlife.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 20, 2022

Because dialogue is used so sparingly, the viewer is occasionally left wondering exactly what's happening, but the overall impression is of a rare and ancient world into which we've been granted privileged admittance.

| May 20, 2022

Horse Thief makes few concessions to western sensibilities; to experience it is to discover a cinema far removed from our own.

| May 20, 2022

One of the most fiercely demanding and awesomely beautiful films you are ever likely to see.

| May 20, 2022

Anyone interested in the fate of contemporary Tibet or in the ancient and fascinating rituals of this remote culture would be well advised to see Tian Zhuangzhuang’s Horse Thief.

| May 20, 2022

The issues here are universal: how individual needs conflict with those of the tribe, how crime is punished, how the God-fearing sinner fears the prospect of a godless world even more than the prospect of the Almighty's wrath.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 20, 2022

Photographed as if the eye of God were in the camera's view-finder, The Horse Thief surveys Norbu's fated life with an exalted grace.

| May 20, 2022

It is film capable of transporting its audience into a world it has almost certainly never seen.

| May 20, 2022

The cinematography of Hou Yong and Zhao Fei is achingly beautiful. Not a frame is wasted; every shot has been immaculately composed and executed. It’s enough to leave you gasping.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 20, 2022

Horse Thief cries to be seen, but prepare for confusion, mixed blessings.

| May 20, 2022

Patience is needed... But patience is rewarded, too. If the film is economical with the action, it is positively sumptuous with the setting.

| May 20, 2022

Point and shoot this is not; what it achieves with the bare minimum of narrative convention is enough to put most films released in the twenty-three years since to shame.

| May 20, 2022

It's difficult to recall the last time a film was able to convincingly portray a journey into a man's soul, while setting its story against so spectacular a series of panoramic vistas.

| May 20, 2022

It offers the most awesomely plausible account of Tibetan life and culture ever seen in the west. It's one of the few films whose images show you things you've never seen before.

| Feb 9, 2006