Entertainment Weekly
It's a testament to (Damon's) tightly coiled performance that Bill comes off as nuanced and sympathetic as he does...
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Stillwater
The writer-director of Best Picture Oscar-winner Spotlight helms this crime-drama centred on an Oklahoma oil-rig roughneck who travels to France in an attempt to exonerate his daughter for a murder she claims she didn't commit. Stars Matt Damon and Abigail Breslin (Zombieland).
2021Rating: M, Violence & offensive language139 minsUSADreamWorks Pictures
CrimeDrama
Stillwater / Reviews
Rolling Stone
(Stillwater would) be more openly ridiculous, feel far more manipulative, if not for Damon's performance... (His) magic is in making a certain plainness, a near-anonymity, defiantly charismatic.
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The quality of the acting makes it easy to overlook how increasingly leaden Stillwater becomes - but not easy enough.
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Salon
Stillwater should be a deep investigation into a moral quandary, but it just ends up being shallow and irresponsible.
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Time Magazine
Matt Damon plays the ultimate ham-fisted American in France, doing such a good job of it that he helps disguise the flaws of this sometimes compelling but often frustrating movie.
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RogerEbert.com
Ultimately, the cacophony of all these plot lines converging and the weight of the messaging being conveyed is almost too much to bear.
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Vulture
An enthralling, exasperating, and, above all else, ambitious affair that doesn't soften or demand sympathy for its difficult main character but does insist on according him his full humanity.
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The New York Times
Bad things happen and it’s somebody’s fault, but it’s all so very vague.
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Slant Magazine
Stillwater gives itself over to drastic plot twists that derail what was already a film over-stuffed with narrative incident and ideas.
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The Globe and Mail
Stillwater is wonderfully compelling before becoming completely baffling.
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Paste
A hokey and hectoring saga that evinces little respect or affection for its characters.
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Los Angeles Times
It's possible to... admire the obvious intelligence and care that have been brought to bear on Stillwater - without fully buying the trail of contrivances and compromises it leaves in its wake.
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San Francisco Chronicle
An ideal fusion of a Hollywood-style overall narrative with the detailed, lived-in emotional truth of a first-rate European effort.
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Hollywood Reporter
Matt Damon gives a solid performance... But (the) story is clunky, old-fashioned and predictable when it’s not implausible.
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Empire Magazine
Stillwater mashes up quest-for-justice, father-daughter dramatics, fortysomething romance and mid-life introspection for a refreshingly adult drama.
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Vanity Fair
It’s rather remarkable that a big Hollywood studio is releasing this difficult, curious film. I hope people give its heady mix of melodrama and political allusion a chance.
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Little White Lies
It’s a disappointing, uneven and overlong film, but there’s something oddly compelling about how messy the end result is.
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Variety
Bidegain knows (that) literal-mindedness gets boring, and so he and Debré come at each scene sideways: They let certain things happen off screen, focusing instead on seemingly mundane snapshots that reveal far more about character.
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IndieWire
A strained but strangely affecting turducken of a movie that bakes a dad-on-a-mission thriller together with a heartwarming fish-out-of-water story and then a brutal crime drama...
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