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

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

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

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

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

A cinma vrit look at the rootless Native American community that once upon a time lived in Bunker Hill and hung out in downtown bars such as Club Ritz, this Kent Mackenzie film is a brooding picture of a darkly beautiful, long-gone Los Angeles.

| Aug 22, 2008

It is like cracking open a time capsule.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 25, 2008

You can only brood on the near half-century since The Exiles was shot -- and be grateful that someone went to that place and captured it all.

| Jul 14, 2008

While the mood is spot-on, the dubbed dialogue is so persistently lousy that it besmirches the proceedings' otherwise-entrancing beauty.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 11, 2008

In the secret, unwritten history of alternative American culture [Mackenzie] stands as a hero, alongside the Indians of Bunker Hill and the generations before them.

| Jul 11, 2008

It took nearly 50 years, but an important piece of film history is finally getting its due.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 11, 2008

A semidocumentary account of native Americans living in Los Angeles's downtown Bunker Hill, its evocations of loneliness and despair and renewal are among the most eloquent in American cinema.

| Original Score: A | Jul 11, 2008

Compared to the slick approach that Hollywood took even to the 'social problem' films of the era, The Exiles is bracing and raw, more akin to the French New Wave and British kitchen-sink dramas.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 10, 2008

This 50-year-old film about a Los Angeles neighborhood on the skids and its barely tethered dwellers stands as the freshest movie in theaters.

| Jul 10, 2008

Despite its compact time frame the film conjures a powerful sensation of purgatory: a night like many others.

| Jul 7, 2008