The threat of violence permeates every moment of Gary Oldman's directorial debut.

| Mar 19, 2025

The film is unsparing in its detail of domestic turmoil and savagery.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 18, 2024

Though uncompromising in its portrayal of violence, Nil by Mouth tempers its bleakness with moments of tender understanding and wounding insight; in short, it's a must-see.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 22, 2024

Years after it's release it still feels as painful as when it was released.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 5, 2024

A dense portrait of the tiny discomfiting gestures, irritable glances and physical tics that build to a sudden eruption of bone-crushing rage.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 4, 2022

It is an urban pastoral and social-realist tragedy.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 3, 2022

If Oldman is ever to direct again, only time will tell. Until then, “Nil By Mouth” remains as striking a film — perhaps even more so — as it was a quarter century ago.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 22, 2022

Kathy Burke gives a brilliant, award-winning performance as Val, a woman trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with her abusive husband...

| May 10, 2021

Nil By Mouth offers a harrowing look at a working-class family beset by drugs, alcohol and abuse.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 9, 2018

Oldman goes after a Mike Leigh- Ken Loach kind of low-downness, a slice of crappy working-class life that’s also a chance to slice open his own vein and let hot blood therapeutically flow.

| Original Score: B | Sep 7, 2011

Rough, tough but with an underlying generosity toward its characters... an impressive writing-helming debut cloaked in a torrent of profanity and loutish, abusive behavior.

| Mar 26, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 17, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 1, 2006

Shot and scripted in a deceptively casual, bleakly 'realist' style, it's the closest Britain has produced to a Cassavetes film, and as such, profoundly humane.

| Jan 26, 2006

There's so much authenticity and raw emotion here that most viewers will be able to excuse the fact that they don't understand any of the dialogue.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 24, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 6, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 16, 2004

An uncompromising drama.

| Original Score: C+ | Dec 23, 2003

Imagine a movie where every character is played by Gary Oldman, in the drunken overacting Oldman mode. Oldman's unfocused and self-indulgent directorial debut has moments of poignancy and insight, but not enough to make it endurable.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Aug 11, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 14, 2003