Meryl Streep's performance is brilliant but too often back-benched by writer-director Alan J. Pakula's pokey, misguided adaptation of William Styron’s novel.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 22, 2024

An infuriatingly bad movie.

| Sep 19, 2023

It's both crushing and triumphant.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 7, 2020

For all the significance of the revelations about Sophie's past, it is the interaction between the three central characters that gives the story its strength.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 13, 2020

The film is tentative when the story demands voice. Sophie's Choice, no matter how disturbing, remains muted.

| Jul 13, 2020

Streep and Kline, embodying their characters in a way that goes beyond performing, obliterate the excesses on their straight and stirring journey to the heart.

| Jun 17, 2020

The amazing intimacy Pakula creates with the audience ultimately makes Sophie's Choice the best film of the year.

| Jun 17, 2020

Whatever the film's weaknesses are, it is, albeit unsurprisingly, saved by Streep.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Jun 17, 2020

I found myself more intrigued by the actress than moved by the character, fascinated by Meryl's "choices" rather than Sophie's Choice.

| Feb 26, 2020

...a cynical, too-slick-for-its-own-good bit of blatant awards-season filmmaking.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 9, 2019

The dramatic structure of the possible conflict lacks inspiration. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 28, 2019

Streep's performance is outstanding.

| Aug 20, 2019

Sophie's Choice is a rare film, literate, deeply moving and gifted with an absolutely awe-inspiring performance by Meryl Streep.

| Nov 12, 2018

Tragic post-WWII tale has violence, death, and cursing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 6, 2018

In other ways the film is just as unsatisfactory as the book, because it's inseparably strapped to basic flaws. The story has no center, no protagonist. To whom does the action of the novel happen?

| Jan 9, 2018

And while Meryl Streep's performance is largely worthy of its laurels ... the film around it is much harder to forgive. Beyond Streep, Sophie's Choice is little more than a tediously assembled WWII drama of interminable length.

| Original Score: C | Aug 15, 2014

The way Streep inhabits Sophie, and brings her history to life whether she's explicitly talking about the past or carrying herself across the room with wounded grace, can't help but make parts of the rest of the film seem smaller by comparison.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 29, 2014

A suffocating 151 minutes long, with a healthy portion of that running time devoted to a hunk of Holocausploitation of the most crass and cynical variety. And that's the good part.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Nov 5, 2009

Without Streep, Sophie's Choice would have been a very good motion picture. With her, it attains greatness.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 30, 2009

Stunning to the max, and Streep is memorable as Sophie.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 2, 2008