The film has a clear political and conscientious bent, but it does it in such a clumsy, obvious, didactic, boring and manipulative way that the artistic result is disappointing... [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jun 22, 2023

The Search is an ungainly dose of good intentions that undercooks and over bakes.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 30, 2019

The Search is what happens when winning awards supersedes making cinema.

| Nov 18, 2017

Trying desperately to be provocative (it's not), the only feeling it leaves you with is indignation that you wasted any time on such an insulting mess.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 5, 2017

The Search has a lot of passion behind it, but little in terms of craft.

| Original Score: C- | Jun 6, 2016

The French director's follow-up to his Oscar-winning silent movie comedy, The Artist, is everything The Artist was not: long, unoriginal and heavy-handed.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 12, 2015

Young Hadji's silence gives The Search what lasting power it possesses.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 12, 2015

Yes, it may not live up to Fred Zinneman's 1948 film on which it's loosely based, but it's strong and powerful all the same: a film where it's clear the director is in complete control.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 12, 2015

After winning the Oscar for his glorified trinket The Artist, Hazanavicius throws a spotlight on human rights horrors. His well-intentioned children-in-peril story, set during the second Chechen war, is periodically moving but unwieldy and heavy-handed.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 12, 2015

The film's only arresting aspect is its takedown of the Russian military: homophobic, racist, xenophobic, and barbaric.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 9, 2014

An immense (two hours and 29 minutes) and gravely serious film tackling the humanitarian disaster of the Second Chechen War of 1999-2000.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 23, 2014

...the film as a whole is tepid and familiar enough that it's hard to even find much to salvage in the acting.

| Original Score: D | May 22, 2014

The Search is a lecture. As laudable as the film is in many ways, I'm glad I'll never have to sit through it again.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 22, 2014

The Search paints a compelling portrait of a war-torn nation but labours its points too heavily, its gait stiff and lumbering where The Artist was joyfully fleet of foot.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 22, 2014

It would appear that when it comes to Hazanavicius' films, silence really is golden.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 22, 2014

Hazanavicius has confused sobriety with impact, and mulched down all the stories you might want to tell about Chechnya into a generic, undermotivated wallow.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 21, 2014

It can't help but feel slightly hubristic - and a sad waste of an opportunity for all involved.

Full Review | May 21, 2014

Oscar winner Michel Hazanavicius makes a 180-degree shift from the effervescent charms of 'The Artist' with this grueling, lumbering and didactic war picture.

| May 21, 2014

The Search is a film with sincerity and commitment, and an earnest rejection of the horror of war. But sentimentality is at its core.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 21, 2014

Michel Hazanavicius's straw man conception of the Russians as brutal homophobes is hammered away at with an emphasis that's questionable at best.

| May 21, 2014