It's to her credit that Blethyn never alienates the audience, despite this, and manages to prioritise the subtly beautiful relationship between the suffering duo. Without it, the film is less than the sum of its parts perhaps, but it's worth seeing...

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 19, 2021

It's astonishingly moving, in its quiet, harrowing, weary way, although you may rightly ask: if it's so painful, why would I want to sit though it? Because, my dears, that is life.

| Aug 30, 2018

[Brenda] Blethyn as the beleaguered Elizabeth, who is both transforming and transformative.

| Sep 18, 2017

Though the arc of the story is fairly predictable, Brenda Blethyn and Sotigui Kouyate bring humanity to their roles.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 7, 2012

The film is a matter of Brenda Blethyn's performance vs. Sotigui Kouyate's presence.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 16, 2012

There isn't a whole lot of nuance in writer-director Rachid Bouchareb's unapologetically political story. But Blethyn's performance ultimately draws viewers in.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 23, 2012

It would be nice to say that Bouchareb, who also wrote and directed "Days of Glory" and "Outside the Law," succeeds. He does not entirely. But he doesn't fail, either.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 12, 2012

Powerful. Director Rachid Bouchareb draws excellent, haunting performances from Blethyn and Kouyate. Ultimately moving and cautionary, "London River" shouldn't be missed.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 16, 2011

Not surprisingly, the choice of the actress who played lead female character in Mike Leigh's "Secrets and Lies" betrays an affinity for Leigh in more than just the casting--and there's nothing wrong with that.

| Dec 9, 2011

[T]wo strangers surprisingly find that horror makes the globalization of terror very personal [with] Blethyn's convincing performance [as] a desperate mother.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 9, 2011

An engaging morality play about the quest of an English woman and an African Muslim to find their children after the 2005 terrorist attack in London.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 8, 2011

Blethyn and Kouyat inhabit and expand the film's earnestly instructive intentions, leaving us with a deeply-felt experience rather than a naively-sketched lesson.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 8, 2011

"London River'' features on-target acting by its two leads, but they receive scant support from the wobbly plot.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 8, 2011

Bouchareb's greatest accomplishment is successfully tackling class, grief and Islamophobia.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 7, 2011

Demonstrates how great acting can infuse a banal, politically correct drama with dollops of emotional truth.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 6, 2011

There's such a graceful sense of restraint in how this real-life tragedy is treated, one that filters any potential for ripped-from-yesterday's-headlines sensationalism through a respectful requiem of loss and grief.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 6, 2011

Bouchareb brings a measured hand to this intimate, occasionally overdetermined sketch of the aloneness at the center of our global confluence.

| Dec 6, 2011

Although the film occasionally cuts away to contextualized clips from news reports, it keeps its focus small-scale, filtering the world historical through the intimately personal.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 4, 2011

The film's message about these worried individuals and the larger family of all humanity is a bit obvious at times, but the performances keep you watching.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 14, 2011

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 14, 2011