Thousand Pieces of Gold confronts the West, both its history and its place in American cinema.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 18, 2022

Chao is charming and believable as strapping Lalu... How she comes to find angels in a country that in 1882 expelled Chinese immigrants makes for an involving tale.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 16, 2022

Ms. Chao gives a spirited performance that's matched expertly by Mr. Cooper's aw-shucks courtliness and Mr. Chan's slick villainy... This first feature by independent filmmaker Nancy Kelly is a most winning little western.

| Feb 16, 2022

Despite some amateurish acting and editing, Thousand Pieces of Gold demands attention because of the very peculiar nature of this story of Lalu Nathoy (Rosalind Chao).

| Feb 16, 2022

Director Kelly, who had previously made documentaries, uses the Montana locations to give an epic feel to the story, but keeps it warm and human by never caving in to melodrama. The performances are uniformly good, especially by Rosalind Chao.

| Feb 16, 2022

Despite its occasionally slow moments, this account of a young Chinese woman's struggle for dignity in an 1880s mining town wins you over with its unassuming grandeur, its modest, sturdy production values and its gently asserted, keenly felt convictions.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 16, 2022

1000 Pieces of Gold documents the lives of women who have thus far remained invisible. And Lalu’s own story is compelling, recounting the life of a woman who’s able to determine her own fate in a world in which she’s virtually powerless.

| Feb 16, 2022

With the sweep of an epic and the intimacy of an art film, Thousand Pieces of Gold is both an exploration of America's perverse magnanimity toward immigrants and a terse, eloquent story of love born of pragmatism.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 16, 2022

Nancy Kelly's stirring feminist Western, Thousand Pieces of Gold, comes with a rare delicacy, like that of a small, four-character off-Broadway play that's been carefully -- and handsomely -- "opened up" for the screen.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 16, 2022

Chao's performance is so solidly tempered and the sweep of events is so tumultuous, that there is little time to contemplate the story's shortcomings.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 16, 2022

With remarkable skill, compression and economy, it takes art alternative look at American frontier life, lets us watch the mainstream of history from the smaller, more perilous currents outside.

| Feb 16, 2022

Kelly's direction is competent, but tending toward the melodramatic cliché.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 16, 2022

The picture just drifts along, passively and pleasantly, never making more than minimal demands on the viewer's attention or intelligence.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 16, 2022

For people who appreciate serious historical drama, Thousand Pieces of Gold is a fine addition to the cinematic legacy of the Old West.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 16, 2022

Though its story is honestly earnest and plain... its characters are unpredictably and engagingly human.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 16, 2022

Anne Makepeace's screenplay and Nancy Kelly's direction reflect what might be called a feminist fidelity to the material which turns out unsurprisingly to be the true, century-old story of a Manchurian woman named Lalu Nathoy.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 16, 2022

1000 Pieces of Gold is a beautifully told story about the real American West and the immigrants who lived in it Rosalind Chao known best for her recurring role in television's Star Trek: The Next Generation gives a luminous performance.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 16, 2022

The film has both epic sweep and a compelling human interest.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 15, 2022

1000 Pieces of Gold is a small story about real people and situations that has a genuineness and honesty but lacks dramatic tension.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 15, 2022

[An] insightful glimpse at a little-seen aspect of the Old West, based on a true story.

| Feb 15, 2022