Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The film is a competent but callow work dealing with a monstrous subject that automatically rejects callowness. Read more
Tom Keogh, Seattle Times: One senses that Gansel took the most egregious stories from his research and stuffed them all into the shapeless script. Read more
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: A fascinating look at a little-known aspect of the Nazi regime. Read more
Janice Page, Boston Globe: The best thing about Gansel's film is it doesn't ask you to absolve anyone; it only tries to make everyone a little more human. Read more
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: A work of exemplary craftsmanship, crisp and forthright yet modulated by subtle nuances, Before the Fall ranks high among the year's films. Read more
Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: It asks us to sympathize with teenage boys being groomed for National Socialist glory, and for that reason alone, it absorbs. Read more
Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Nearly every point made in Before the Fall, be it about militarism or the secret sexual codes of fascism, is made too obviously, or has been made before, in films from Cabaret to Europa, Europa. Read more
Chuck Wilson, L.A. Weekly: Completely predictable but affecting nonetheless, proof that when movie cliches are presented with rigor and feeling, they can pack a fresh punch. Read more
Gene Seymour, Newsday: The movie's own moral stance is above reproach, and the two leads are engaged enough to make you care about the outcome. Read more
Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: Nazis were once innocent children -- that, at least, is the notion behind Dennis Gansel's overcooked wartime drama about the ill-fated friendship between two teenage boys at a training school for elite German military recruits. Read more
Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: Set in Berlin in 1942, Dennis Gansel's intensely beautiful film brings us inside Hitler's network of elite schools to groom young Germans for positions of power. Read more
Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: ... hooks you by focusing on Friedrich's very human story. Read more
R. Emmet Sweeney, Village Voice: We get tepid moralizing on dehumanization in the military. Read more