Lake of Fire: Critic Reviews

Viewer opinions about life and death provoked by Lake of Fire are not likely to flip, but they sure will get shaken.

One lesson of Lake of Fire is the galvanizing power of the visual image. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and sometimes pictures are not enough.

Lake of Fire does something with the volatile subject of abortion that neutral observers and even political partisans can appreciate: It offers a wide representation of perspectives and opinions.

Lake wants to break through decades of encrusted rhetoric to make us think again. With one slow reveal of Norma McCorvey, a.k.a. 'Jane Roe,' the movie upends all you assumed about this subject.

A provocatively beautiful movie on the hottest hot-button issue in American life: a woman's right to an abortion.

This sprawling, scary, nearly unbearable film [is] more important than ever.

At 152 minutes, his film doesn't seem long, because at every moment something absorbing, disturbing, depressing or infuriating is happening.

No one will have an easy time of it with Lake of Fire, a work of profound anguish centered on the abortion rights debate.

You may not leave the theater having switched sides, but you'll probably respect the other side more, and that in itself would be a victory for human life.

Handsomely filmed on silvery 35mm and high-definition by Kaye himself, the shrewdly edited pic balances a full spectrum of views from all sides of the abortion debate without obviously taking a position itself.

[The] film does nothing to advance the debate but does a great deal to show us what's at stake.

Highly compelling, if overlong and overwrought.

Smart, visually appealing, and consistently engaging.

A 2 1/2 -hour documentary on abortion may sound like a hard sell, but the depth and scope of Tony Kaye's grueling Lake of Fire nonetheless justifies feeling like you've just taken a long, blistering soak in one.

Doesn't aim to win converts or preach to the converted. His goal is rather to clear through the rhetoric, and look at abortion and its place in the American political dialog.

The film shows shocking footage of actual abortions in progress and the remains of aborted fetuses, as well as the appalling images of murdered abortion clinicians and the horrifying testimonies of pro-life fanatics who are convinced all abortionists shou

Lake's head-on confrontation of a problem most people simply wish to ignore is documentary cinema at its most raw and vital.

As the U.S. elections media coverage becomes incessant, it's worth keeping in mind that actual listening to other "sides" can be enlightening.

An intense, sometimes sickening, documentary about the abortion issue in the United States which reeks of brimstone.

The most striking footage is of an abortion; the next is of hateful and ignorant Americans

Demands we throw out our preconceived notions and face the issue without walls to protect us.

definitive documentary on the subject that is so gripping that every thinking person will be forced to confront core issues

Doesn't quite feel as definitive as the filmmaker intended, although I can't imagine how any film on the subject could get closer than this.

Hardly seemed like the "definitive" film about abortion as it thinks of itself.