Nothing But the Truth 2008

Ben Mankiewicz, At the Movies: I thought the performances were great, particularly Vera Farmiga. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Every once in a while, for reasons as random as a Hollywood executive's taste or an economic meltdown, a perfectly decent movie slips through the cracks, never receives a theatrical release and is relegated to the purgatory called straight-to-DVD. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Nothing But The Truth operates a lot like Billy Ray's Shattered Glass and Breach, offering up the sort of no-nonsense, meat-and-potatoes docudrama that's in short supply these days. Read more

Sam Adams, Los Angeles Times: The last-minute switcheroo suggests, perhaps unintentionally, that Rachel is less a martyr to the cause than a schemer looking to cover her tracks. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: All this plays out in brisk fashion, and the actors, who also include Alan Alda as Rachel's venerable lawyer, mostly seem to be having a high old time. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Writer-director Lurie makes dramas that whole-headedly engage ethical quandaries yet dodge easy judgments. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Nothing But the Truth has been made with brains, pace, and skill, and with a topical fury that puts it ahead of the curve on its real subject: the withering of freedom in a democracy gone apathetic. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Though a final, sly revelation stacks the deck a bit, Truth makes a smart, measured case out of a real-life drama that wound up far less heroically. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: The sexing up/dumbing down fails to compensate for the gobs of punishingly dull blah-blah about crusading reporters. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: A finely-crafted film of people and ideas, of the sort more common before the movie mainstream became a sausage factory. Read more

Stephen Garrett, Time Out: There's a halfway point when the rush of watching the inner machinations of power players turns into the listless predictability of a TV courtroom drama, crossed with the voyeurism of a mild grindhouse prison movie. Read more

Kevin Williamson, Toronto Sun: This is a meaty, thematically ambitious political potboiler. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: The story of a journalist willing to go to prison to defend her right to protect her source on an explosive story, Nothing but the Truth itself resembles a workmanlike piece of journalism motivated by an outraged sense of injustice. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Lurie isn't Larry Cohen, let alone Sam Fuller, but give him points for working the same tradition of engage tabloid filmmaking. Read more