As much an impressionistic gallery of urban landscapes as a set of candid portraits, the film joins an ardent sense of place with the subtle flux of inner life.

| Jul 13, 2020

... there is also something singular and specific about these people and the culture they have created within the city: [Kent] Mackenzie's portrait may be fiction but this world is very real.

| May 4, 2017

The exiles of the title mean the Indians-exiled from their land and with no connection to the white-run city around them. The title also means us: anyone who has ever been trapped in a late-night city, caught by the neon's glare like a moth.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 20, 2016

The question of who is looking and to what end is barely posed, let alone answered.

| Mar 16, 2015

It's as if someone had done a ghost dance and it worked, just a little -- enough to turn your sigh into a gasp of amazement.

| Nov 4, 2013

Kent MacKenzie's forgotten indie basks in the retroactive glow of never having had a theatrical release -- as if that somehow makes it a work of misunderstood genius.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

A fascinating hybrid of art and life, The Exiles may not hew entirely faithfully to literal truth but nonetheless conveys a form of artistic honesty that is inescapable. It's a mesmerizing marriage of poetry and prose.

| Sep 24, 2011

A ghostly and startling tale of Native Americans in Los Angeles -- a fusion of documentary and fiction -- in the late '50s. Never previously released, it's a revelation.

| Original Score: A- | Sep 7, 2011

There is poetry in this atmosphere as well, suggested not least by the candid, often heartbreaking voiceovers of the main characters.

| Jul 6, 2010

A sorrowful and beautiful film, the kind you never see from mainstream Tinseltown studios, then or now.

| May 6, 2010

Kent Mackenzie's 1961 movie 'The Exiles' was so revolutionary that even now it seems gutsy.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 18, 2009

It's an essential film that hardly anyone saw upon its release in 1961.

| Original Score: A | Sep 23, 2009

For its beautiful black-and-white aesthetics, docudrama realism, and, sadly, still fresh portrait of off-reservation Native Americans, an excellent rediscovery

| Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 7, 2008

The amateur actors, many of whom in reality met sad ends on those same streets, are utterly convincing. You have the sense again and again that you've unearthed a time capsule -- a sensation that cinema alone of all the arts can impart.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 5, 2008

The Exiles ... presents one boozy night in the lives of Homer, Cliff, Tommy and Yvonne, from a convertible joy ride through the Third Street Tunnel, to an early-morning powwow.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 20, 2008

Mackenzie imposes no obvious attitude or mediating outsider's perspective on the material; he just presents it to us, a snapshot of an otherwise unknown culture, with details specific to its time and place.

Full Review | Nov 12, 2008

Kent Mackenzie's magnificent, long-undistributed, unclassifiable first feature, The Exiles, stands as a rare consideration of the inner and outer lives of American Indians in a big American city.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 18, 2008

Just because a movie was lost and found doesn't mean it's worth your $8.75.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 15, 2008

Rife with astonishing black-and-white images of an unknown L.A. and clashing sounds of bars, cinemas and poker games, The Exiles is one of those movies that functions as both artifact and fresh discovery.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 10, 2008

Its moving portraiture is refreshingly free of cliches and moralizing platitudes, and the high-contrast black-and-white photography and dense, highly creative sound track are equally impressive.

| Oct 10, 2008