The Dardennes build drama slowly and deliberately, often perching their handheld cameras right at their subjects' earlobes or on the backs of their necks. It's an odd choice, but one that works improbably well in achieving intimacy.

| Mar 16, 2020

The instructor is played by Olivier Gourmet in an extraordinarily physical (and cerebral) performance.

| Apr 11, 2018

It's a clear-eyed style of filmmaking reminiscent of The Decalogue or The Bicycle Thief, movies that adopt a raw, bare-bones aesthetic to capture the difficult morality of everyday life.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jun 3, 2008

There's no music, not much dialogue (and what there is is mundane), a deliberately bland video look, and not much happens.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 24, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 3, 2005

The Son will dazzle you if you patiently think it through and discuss it. The effort you put into it will determine how much it rewards you in the end.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Feb 1, 2005

Actions, not words or feelings, are at the center of The Son, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's challenging, nearly religious parable of humanity, fallenness, and grace.

| Original Score: A+ | May 31, 2004

Simple yet deep. Not for blockbuster fans but amazing in its own way.

Full Review | Original Score: A | May 27, 2004

The Son proves that [the Dardennes] can take on the concepts of the human desire for revenge and the capacity for forgiveness without becoming precious or overbearing.

| May 21, 2004

See if you don't find Olivier Gourmet's performance one of the most compelling and natural of the year.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 29, 2004

The events are simple. The emotions are hugely complex.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2004

Fails to provide enough tension to draw us into what, at first, seems a properly chilling crime drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 23, 2004

The Son takes forever to get going. And while that is a deliberate move by the filmmakers, Belgium's Dardenne brothers, it's still a problem.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 16, 2004

[The film's] sense of claustrophobia heightens the idea that guides The Son, that past events inextricably tie people, even strangers, together.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 16, 2004

...a work of enormous moral and spiritual depth, where sacrifice, forgiveness and redemption are revealed as the natural extensions of the movie's humdrum landscape.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 7, 2004

If you have to pick between movies about the spiritual passion of tortured carpenters, make this the one.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 2, 2004

The simple but persuasive social drama at some point grabs your attention and never lets go.

| Original Score: A | Mar 31, 2004

This carpentry is art.

Full Review | Oct 3, 2003

Although Olivier never faces a gang of outlaws, he becomes a modern Gary Cooper that stares down his inner demons

| Original Score: B | Oct 3, 2003

A substantial story about how one man handles his personal turmoil.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 25, 2003