The Yellow Birds doesn't say much of anything outside of the mundane. The trio of young men at its center are compelling enough, but the entire ordeal feels like a mash-up of countless other movies.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 10, 2018

As "war is hell" movies go, this one is better than usual.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 15, 2018

A rather dispiriting slog of a movie.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 15, 2018

"The Yellow Birds" is a difficult film that hammers home its point that war is a living hell that extends far beyond the battlefield.

| Original Score: B | Jun 15, 2018

Making a late appearance in the Iraq War movie cycle, the impressively acted "The Yellow Birds" manages to leave an affecting mark even as it constantly struggles to find a distinctive voice of its own.

| Jun 14, 2018

Watch it once, and you could come away a little underwhelmed; watch it twice, and you begin to suspect that its almost humdrum rhythms are exactly the point.

| Jun 14, 2018

What you see and hear will haunt you. Despite all the strong elements, a somber mood is what you will take away.

| Jun 11, 2018

You may want for something to hold on to, but Tye Sheridan and Alden Ehrenreich slip through the fingers, both seeming uninterested and restless to move on to other projects.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 10, 2018

A lyrical and bitterly sad drama about boys ruined by war, Alexandre Moors's film succeeds on style while falling short on plot.

| Jul 12, 2017

Basically every war movie ever made takes pains to point out that war is hell, but the way The Yellow Birds presents that hell is interesting, precisely because it's not that interesting.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 13, 2017

It's not only that The Yellow Birds doesn't have anything new to say, but that it's playing movie karaoke with other, better war movies.

| Jan 25, 2017

"The Yellow Birds" ... takes the form of a detective story, albeit one in which the mystery is as drearily protracted as it is ultimately unpersuasive.

| Jan 23, 2017

The film seems chiefly informed by other movies; the generic combat scenes are staged with the same shaky handheld "urgency" as every other Iraq War picture, while the characters have no psychology beyond the usual innocence-lost arc.

| Original Score: C | Jan 23, 2017

"The Yellow Birds" mostly feels like a slightly different version of "American Sniper," not least because of its disregard for any lives lost that don't belong to Americans.

| Jan 23, 2017

Moors excels at creating mood.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 22, 2017

Moors doesn't approach these conventional war-film narrative threads from a straightforward perspective. Instead, he subverts our expectations.

| Jan 22, 2017

An excellent novel about the Iraq War and its homefront fallout has been turned into a rather flat and disappointing film in The Yellow Birds.

| Jan 22, 2017

In almost every crucial way, "The Yellow Birds" is a flat and listless piece of moviemaking, a monotonous indie dirge that will probably end up fighting hard to win even a tiny audience.

| Jan 21, 2017