This is a honourable film that has hits and misses. Watch it for the performances, particularly Redgrave's. Its most telling line is this: Bravery in the face of the enemy

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 8, 2017

The Secret Scripture is a highly streamlined adaptation of Sebastian Barry's 2008 Man Booker finalist.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 8, 2017

Its lack of nuance and persistent plotting issues frequently undermine much of the potential emotional heft.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 19, 2017

Sebastian Barry's Costa prizewinning novel is gutted and reconstituted to the point of absurdity in this cockeyed adaptation.

| Original Score: 1/5 | May 18, 2017

Variously lukewarm and lugubrious ...

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 18, 2017

It's the construction, not the performances, which undermines The Secret Scripture.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 17, 2017

Goes from a fairly forgettable romantic drama into a full-tilt fiasco.

| Original Score: 1/5 | May 15, 2017

A maudlin adaptation hampered by low energy and lapses of logic, The Secret Scripture does a disservice to the book it is based on, and the Irish history it plunders.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 15, 2017

All the smouldering gorgeousness of Rooney Mara, Theo James, Jack Reynor and Eric Bana can't dress up this mawkish slog of a movie.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 14, 2017

So baffling are the motivations, so weird are the coincidences and so unlikely are the catastrophes that the film suggests an adaptation of a South American magic realist text.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 23, 2017

In lesser hands, this might've been some very clunky business, but Sheridan directs with the confident touch of an old pro, and he couldn't have asked for a better cast.

| Sep 18, 2016

Disjointed and disinterested in entertaining any and all prospective viewers, the overlong slab of melodrama is one of the most vanilla experiences at the movies in quite some time.

| Sep 13, 2016

Ultimately, this is more the rough outline to a movie than a satisfying picture in and of itself.

| Original Score: C- | Sep 12, 2016

It doesn't take too long for Jim Sheridan's period romance "The Secret Scripture" to contort itself into a befuddlingly bungled mess. But at the outset, it seems to have everything going for it.

| Sep 11, 2016

Young Rose, initially feisty, becomes an unknowable non-entity. We never truly understand her and Mara quickly becomes visibly bored.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 11, 2016