A thoughtful and icy examination of the creation of a mass shooter.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 18, 2024

Nitram is a stark, difficult, but deeply reflective film that asks sincerely why we describe these crimes as incomprehensible at the very same time as we watch the same patterns unfold, again and again.

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

[A] quietly harrowing drama...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 4, 2022

Respectful in its treatment of the final carnage, psychologically nuanced without offering the perpetrator an ounce of sympathy, Nitram is a character study of the highest order.

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

Kurzel is not interested in sympathising with the devil. He just wants to ask "Why?"

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 1, 2022

On the whole, this is a level-headed retelling of a shocking event. It highlights the continued rise in gun ownership in Australia at the end of the film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 1, 2022

Kurzel walks the line to create a compelling film that never betrays its own awful gravity. He knows how far empathy can extend to someone with none, which part of human horror is unknowable and which is not a mystery.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 30, 2022

Exceptional performances, particularly from Caleb Landry Jones in the lead, and a sensitive touch from director Justin Kurtzel can’t shake the unease of giving yet another cinematic spotlight to a real-life mass murderer.

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

It is the kind of work that presses on a nerve, begging you to stand up or tune out, but compelling you forward nonetheless – with its haunting portrayal of our all too boring capacity for inflicting pain.

| Apr 13, 2022

If you want to witness a destined-to-be-legendary performance from Landry Jones – astonishing in every second — and see a film that illustrates the need for more checks and balances in gun purchases, “Nitram” should not be ignored.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 7, 2022

We have the privilege of looking away, but what Nitram asks us to do is remember.

| Apr 4, 2022

To me, the heartbreak lies in the lack of a mental health safety net to address the young man’s repeated calls for help, and the devastating loss of innocent lives as a result.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2022

Even as they've stuck close to the real-life details, the director Justin Kurzel and his screenwriter, Shaun Grant, have taken care not to glorify the perpetrator or exploit his victims.

| Apr 1, 2022

If Kurzel has made yet another movie about the impenetrable mystery of why someone would be compelled to slaughter innocent people, he’s also made one that underlines how in no uncertain terms.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 31, 2022

Kurzel maps out an exceptionally sad and convincing path to the incident, leaning on Jones brute physicality and childlike emotional swings to suggest that MartinNitram acted on a narrowing set of options.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 31, 2022

It's really terrific -- a very powerful film.

| Mar 30, 2022

In Jones’s smoldering performance, we see a man stretched beyond his limits, a rubber band just waiting to snap back.

| Mar 30, 2022

Kurzel returns to the true crime genre with a more confident eye and mastery of tone, delivering his best film to date in an unsettling examination of mental illness.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 30, 2022

“Nitram” is social realism designed to scare you into clarity about what gets ignored when lives get smaller and vulnerability mutates.

| Mar 30, 2022

Kurzel’s camera watches Nitram from a distance in order to highlight his disconnection—from others, and from himself—as well as in anxious close-ups that provide Jones with ample opportunity to express his character’s volatile, mysterious inner turmoil.

| Mar 29, 2022