Stretched out to nearly an hour and a half, its intensity is diluted and it can feel a little repetitive.

| Original Score: B- | Aug 28, 2021

The men look inward in the most powerful scenes and come face-to-face with the darkness they find. However, it's the moments afterwards, when they... show love and appreciation that are unexpectedly powerful and uplifting.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 22, 2019

I'm glad something so gruelingly powerful came out of that four-day session. Just the sight of seeing these tough-looking guys cheering someone on for pouring their soul out was very touching to me.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 10, 2018

[These inmates] know the darkness that exists within them and that they can help quell it in each other while preventing it from consuming outsiders who've yet to act upon it.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Oct 10, 2018

The daring approach of McLeary and Aldous' filmmaking, completely immersive without trying to be invisible or to influence the chain of events, is ... proven to have been a risk worth taking.

| Mar 21, 2018

A tough, loud, emotional thing to experience.

| Feb 9, 2018

There is serious work being done in The Work, and much good comes of it.

| Feb 7, 2018

Never has a 4,000-year-old aphorism seemed more devastatingly of the moment. But the results are inspiring: it seems The Work works.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 29, 2017

Sceptics may enter Folsom with suspicion, but these are extraordinary scenes, so shocking and dynamic they might be mistaken for exorcisms.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 29, 2017

Incredibly human and filled with a wisdom that only comes from great suffering.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 23, 2017

... The Work is a beautiful film, all the more so because of its willingness to step into the fear and find a raw, unremitting beauty in the witnessing of healing.

| Dec 15, 2017

More than just an advertisement for the process depicted, The Work carries a profound, implicit point about a culture that encourages men to bottle up what they feel, then condemns them after those emotions express themselves in violent, destructive ways.

| Dec 14, 2017

This is a powerful emotional documentary film about prisoners and outsiders who participate in a series of revealing group therapy sessions inside Folsom State Prison.

| Original Score: A | Dec 13, 2017

Intriguing cinema vérité prison documentary that's set inside a single room at the maximum security Folsom State Prison in Sacramento, California.

| Original Score: B- | Dec 1, 2017

Their story of rehab may not appeal to all but it is a story worth hearing and seeing.

| Original Score: B | Dec 1, 2017

Filming almost entirely within one room over just four days, directors Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous have captured something remarkable.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 21, 2017

It has a remarkable premise.

| Nov 20, 2017

Testament to the work of Arturo Santamaria that this area never feels claustrophobic; an opening circular camera movement encompasses all present and will whip the melting pot of emotions into a steadily spiralling, but much needed, whirlpool of release.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 10, 2017

Catharsis for both the prisoners and the outsiders isn't easy to achieve, yet worth the effort.

| Nov 10, 2017

In the first minutes of this movie you are an outsider. By the end, like it or not, you are in it for real.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 10, 2017