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Mary F. Pols, TIME Magazine: Teachers unions are by no means perfect, but Won't Back Down turns them into public school enemy number one. Read more
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: "Won't Back Down" details a bureaucratic process, and yet it plays more like an intense, emotional movie about parents and children. Read more
A.O. Scott, New York Times: However you take its politics, the film upholds a dreary tradition of simplifying and sentimentalizing matters of serious social concern, and dumbing down issues that call for clarity and creative thinking. Read more
Rex Reed, New York Observer: As a message picture, its heart is in the right place. Too bad it doesn't always manage to rise above a swirl of predictable Hollywood cliches. Read more
Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Though it's wonderfully acted, the film stacks the deck so badly that it fails as drama. Read more
Nathan Rabin, AV Club: Regularly devolves into a dry cinematic op-ed with thinly developed characters making didactic speeches articulating the issues involved in the knotty, emotionally charged subject of school choice. Read more
Barbara VanDenburgh, Arizona Republic: It's rich territory for human drama; unfortunately, the film is more interested in slapping a charter-school Band-Aid on the gushing wound than exploring dramatic possibilities. Read more
Ty Burr, Boston Globe: It has the boilerplate urgency of a TV movie that has been blessed with a high-end cast. Read more
Amy Nicholson, Boxoffice Magazine: It's rousing -- if not thrilling -- stuff, a multivitamin for a multiplex crowd. Read more
Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Social-issue movies can have real societal impact. That's why Won't Back Down, which presses a lot of hot buttons, deserves to be taken seriously, and criticized seriously, on its own terms. Read more
Tom Long, Detroit News: [Barns] pours on the corn syrup pretty heavy in parts and it's pretty obvious the film has a clear agenda ... Read more
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Read more
Stephanie Zacharek, Film.com: It's terrible when schools fail our children. But it's not so great when movies fail their actors, either. Read more
David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter: The hot-button issue of public school reform gets unsubtle treatment in this pedestrian and insultingly tendentious drama. Read more
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: So shamelessly manipulative and hopelessly bogus it will make you bite your tongue in regret and despair. Read more
Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: Americans desperately need to have some difficult conversations about the state of public education, but Won't Back Down goes about the task too awkwardly to be helpful or interesting. Read more
Rafer Guzman, Newsday: This movie fears nuance, pushes an agenda and demonizes its opposition. Read more
Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: The plot is just a clothesline on which to hang an unabashedly biased diatribe. Read more
Kyle Smith, New York Post: The film makes a serious effort to present the other side's points. Read more
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: A kind of Norma Rae for the Paul Ryan set ... Read more
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: A film where typecasting and color-coding makes it easy to predict which characters are good or bad. Read more
Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: Inept and bizarre ... a set of right-wing anti-union talking points disguised (with very limited success) as a mainstream motion-picture-type product. Read more
David Germain, Associated Press: "Won't Back Down" lives down to its bland, us-against-them title with a simple-minded assault on the ills of public schools that lumbers along like a math class droning multiplication tables. Read more
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Won't Back Down" is to school reform what "Reefer Madness" is to drug policy. Read more
Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: While the cast is filled with award winners, writer-director Daniel Barnz is a dunce who can't construct an argument without employing flimsy logic and cardboard characters. Read more
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: A drama that's as intellectually crude as it is emotionally calculated. Read more
Bruce Demara, Toronto Star: Won't Back Down doesn't wholly make the grade. Read more
Claudia Puig, USA Today: Even terrific casting and a well-intentioned story don't add up to a wholehearted cinematic win. Read more
Peter Debruge, Variety: Grossly oversimplifying the issue at hand, writer-director Daniel Barnz's disingenuous pot-stirrer plays to audiences' emotions rather than their intelligence. Read more
Melissa Anderson, Village Voice: In Davis's case, marveling at yet another fine performance doesn't stop you from wishing that her first leading role was in a worthier vehicle. Read more
Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture: It mixes attempts at realism and grit with transparently Hollywoodized good guys-vs.-bad guys social melodrama. That requires a deft directorial hand, but director Daniel Barnz doesn't seem to have it. Read more
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: So didactic that viewers are likely to feel less uplifted than lectured. Read more