65
Metascore
18 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 83Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumWriter-director Tanya Hamilton's intellectually ambitious debut drama Night Catches Us is all the more notable for setting well-drawn fictional characters in a fraught, real moment in civil rights history.
- 80The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottMs. Hamilton tells a modest, complex story with admirable clarity and nuance. That her film is so quiet, so evidently invested in contemplation rather than confrontation, gives it power as well as insight.
- 75Philadelphia InquirerCarrie RickeyPhiladelphia InquirerCarrie RickeyMaking a remarkable feature debut, Hamilton distinguishes herself more as a filmmaker than as a screenwriter. While she elicits smoldering performances from Mackie and Washington, the movie around them is rather diffuse.
- 75Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversHamilton manifests her vision of what politics can do to individual thinking with subtlety and sophistication. Remember her name. She's a genuine find.
- 70MovielineMichelle OrangeMovielineMichelle OrangeMost successful are the scenes involving Marcus and Iris, a 10-year-old girl who grew up fatherless and watchful of her tumultuous surroundings.
- 70NPRMark JenkinsNPRMark JenkinsThe movie evokes its time and place so potently that it almost doesn't matter that Hamilton's script proves unequal to her vision.
- 60New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanNew York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman"Night" never quite coalesces into the forceful drama it hopes to be.
- 38New York PostKyle SmithNew York PostKyle SmithIt raises tangled questions about whether it is better to live humiliated or arm yourself, yet for the most part it's dramatically inert, talky and directionless, and it ends quietly without saying much of anything.