Screen Daily
It's a big-hearted picture, certainly, but one that doggedly labours its message.
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The Kindness of Strangers
Zoe Kazan (The Big Sick), Andrea Riseborough (Possessor) and Tahar Rahim (The Mauritanian) star in this drama from writer-director Lone Scherfig (An Education) following a mother who escapes an abusive relationship, taking her sons to start anew in New York.
Clara (Kazan) and her two sons escape from her abusive husband with little more than their car and plan to start over in New York. After the car towed away, the family meets Alice (Riseborough), who gets them into an emergency shelter. While stealing food at a Russian restaurant called ‘Winter Palace’, Clara meets Marc (Rahim), who has been given the chance to help the old eatery regain its former glory. The ‘Winter Palace’ soon becomes a place of unexpected encounters between people who are all undergoing some sort of crisis and whom fate has now brought together.
2019112 minsUK, Germany, Denmark, Canada, USA, France, SwedenEntertainment One
Drama
The Kindness of Strangers / Reviews
Hollywood Reporter
The capable actors do what they can, but audiences are more likely to glaze over than share the qualities of mercy and compassion...
Full reviewVariety
Even Kazan's stalwart commitment to the material can't resolve the clash of grit and whimsy in Scherfig's schizo moral fable.
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The Guardian
Something twee and improbable, weighted down by a dreary yet unconvincing realism.
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IndieWire
Spends much of the time watching its motley collection of lost souls chase their own tails.
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Sight & Sound
These improbable characters weave through one another's lives in maddeningly coincidental, sometimes unintentionally amusing ways...
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RogerEbert.com
A syrupy brew thick with twee and an abundance of cringe-inducing moments pulling at heartstrings.
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