81
Metascore
17 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 91Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumThe great Polish director Andrzej Wajda musters the power of classical filmmaking and personal emotional investment to dramatize a stunning atrocity long covered up.
- 90VarietyVarietyThis plays almost like an academic master class, meticulously exploring the event's ramifications but only catching full fire at the end.
- 83The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayThe A.V. ClubNoel MurrayWajda makes the murders look horrific and jangled, like something out of "Hostel," then ends Katyn with extended darkness and silence, allowing the audience to mourn for the death of a nation.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe period sets, costumes and cinematography all superbly recreate the brutal era, grand illusions and everyday suffering of the Poles under both the Nazis and the Soviets.
- 80New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNew York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinIt is filmed with simplicity, a purity of intent, and I wanted to watch the faces of these men in their last seconds of life--not for the sake of history, but because of Wajda's imperative to put his father's death onscreen. He needed to do this. And somehow, sanity is restored.
- 80The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottThe result is a film with a stately, deliberate quality that insulates it against sentimentality and makes it all the more devastating.
- 75New York PostKyle SmithNew York PostKyle SmithWajda, who lost his father in the purge, gives the film an awful silence and mystery at its core.
- 70Chicago ReaderChicago ReaderAndrzej Wajda has spent much of his long career dramatizing major events in Polish history, and this poignant feature depicts the circumstances surrounding the Soviet Union's massacre of thousands of Polish officers in the spring of 1940.
- 70Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanWhile never less than fascinating, Katyn alternates between scenes of tremendous power and sequences most kindly described as dutiful. It's as if the artist is never certain whether he is making this movie for himself, his father, or the entire nation.
- 60New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierNew York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierA pensive and searching drama that explores how deep into the national psyche these murders in the Katyn forest went.