In the right hands, a docudrama can deliver all the excitement, emotion and storytelling of the very best feature films -- and director Kevin Macdonald has done that with startling clarity in the mountaineering adventure Touching the Void.

| Jan 23, 2019

Excruciatingly tense story of a terrible accident.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 29, 2010

Touching the Void leaves you emotionally and physically spent, and grateful it was only a movie, not a mountain, you had to endure.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2007

Awesome and harrowing.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2007

A slow starter which builds into a chilling depiction of the agonising disintegration of body and mind as they are exposed to the elements.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

As a meditation on extreme human endeavour, character, friendship and the mysteries revealed by facing death, it provides much food for thought.

| Feb 9, 2006

About a primal war waged by man against both himself and the natural world that surrounds him.

| Original Score: B+ | May 4, 2005

Most movies of this type re-create the action far from the actual scene of the crime, but Macdonald has invented a new subgenre: a docudrama in which the docu and the drama are equally authentic.

Full Review | Aug 7, 2004

The facts drop away, and it becomes impossible not to read the movie symbolically -- as a journey to the center of the earth, or farther still.

Full Review | Aug 1, 2004

Forget Cast Away. Forget Alive. Touching the Void may be the most harrowing, dazzling, haunting survival story ever filmed.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 22, 2004

The restaging adds little to our understanding of this story.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 16, 2004

For a movie like this, touching the void just isn't enough. It has to touch the audience, too.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 5, 2004

An edge-of- the-seat, what-else- could-go- wrong thriller with the building momentum of fiction.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 5, 2004

If you walk away from Touching the Void amazed at the strength of the human will to survive, even without faith or solid hope for the future, the film has likely done its job.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Mar 5, 2004

Touching The Void takes us to both heaven and hell, and knowing the final result only serves to increase our sense of awe at the achievement.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 20, 2004

Nail-biting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 20, 2004

Riveting and remarkably unembellished.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 19, 2004

A wondrous recreation of that physical adventure.

Full Review | Feb 18, 2004

An amazing, mind-boggling story.

| Feb 13, 2004

A tense, well-made tale about excruciating experiences.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 13, 2004