Pray the Devil Back to Hell: Critic Reviews

Gini Reticker's simply made, affecting documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell reveals how these heroic ordinary women prodded the factions to peace and literally brought down Taylor, a leader of sociopathic cruelty.

Uplifting, disheartening, inspiring, enraging -- the mind reels while watching the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell.

A modest but effective work of documentary uplift.

Pray the Devil remembers the golden rule of moviemaking -- rather than tell, it shows, and what it shows is quietly affecting.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell is at once inspiring and horrific.

An object lesson in interfaith cooperation and an instructional manual for people committed to making systemic political change through nonviolent means.

Even though the film is inescapably fragmented and catch-as-catch-can as cinema, its heart is pure and infinitely compassionate.

Compelling docu chronicles the actions of the coalition of Christian and Muslim women who prevailed over warlords and warriors to halt the decades-long fighting that claimed their fathers, brothers, husbands and children.

Gini Reticker's embracing documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell shows how Taylor got his comeuppance from a coalition of tenacious Christian and Muslim women armed only with matching T-shirts.

Relates a powerful story with intelligence, concision and a minimum of distracting stylistic flourishes.

Pray the Devil uses its brief 72 minutes to tell one of the truly heartening international political stories of recent years.

Although filling the watcher with the same sort of outrage that inspired the women to stand up and be counted, this is, at heart, a testimony to the power of solidarity and sisterhood through a single purpose.

It's an outstanding story, which makes up for Pray's moviemaking deficiencies.

The film is brief and not especially creative in its storytelling, but nonetheless unforgettable; this remarkable story deserved to be captured on film.

Limitations aside, it's highly stirring stuff.

This illuminating film by director Gini Reticker and producer Abigail Disney is a much-needed attempt to put the spotlight on a moment of history that still inspires.

The film shows that the women's peace movement, propelled by ordinary citizens, changed what was possible in Liberia.

The story of the women's groups -- Christian and Muslim, uniting for the first time in the nation's history -- is unbelievably inspiring.

Inevitably, Reticker's style falls into monotony that works against the material. Ultimately, though, the power of that material overcomes flaws in presentation.

Some political documentaries suffer from overselling the urgency of their agenda, but director Gini Reticker's Pray the Devil Back to Hell nicely underplays the significance of its subject.

Offers an inspiring portrait of conscientious citizens working to make a change. Yes they can, indeed.

An economically told, extremely powerful story.

Pray The Devil Back To Hell is overly conventional as a documentary, but it's inspiring as a rebuttal to the declining state of the world at large.

Winner of the Best Documentary award at this year's Tribeca Film Festival.