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

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

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

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

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

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

[Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's] most gripping film to date.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 25, 2003

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2003

A gentle warning that in a world guided by an eye for an eye, everyone ends up blind.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 3, 2003

One waits for closure, and instead there is the slowly unfolding revelation of a man torn between rage at the loss of his son, and the unspoken desire, welling up like a long-suppressed groan, to become a father again.

| Apr 3, 2003

A shrewd, highly controlled little film.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 7, 2003

Cinematically speaking, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne are a modern-day miracle.

| Mar 4, 2003

It is as assured and flawless a telling of sadness and joy as I have ever seen.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 22, 2003

This is a fine, uncompromising film, and Gourmet's performance should be called great.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 20, 2003

The Dardenne brothers focus obsessively on physical and material details, thereby imbuing objects and actions with a spiritual significance.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 18, 2003

I can't deny being stirred by the wildly melodramatic climax of The Son, with its thunderously quiescent Zen Buddhist conclusion.

| Jan 30, 2003

This is an astonishing movie.

| Jan 20, 2003

What keeps the tension at a fever pitch is not the narrative's progress, but the inscrutability and unpredictability of its protagonist, Olivier.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 10, 2003

At the movie's abrupt end, we're left wondering if we really, really got it. That's not such a bad thing ... but we're also left wondering if it was all worth the time and effort.

Full Review | Jan 10, 2003

The most spiritually potent and questioning movie we are likely to see this year, one whose basic and often elusive lesson is how rigorous, demanding and costly it can be to behave with charity and act with forgiveness.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 10, 2003