The English Patient: Critic Reviews

An aerobic workout for the tear ducts.

The result is completely intoxicating.

This is a movie to lose yourself in.

This is the real thing, and real things don't come along very often, so you'd better snap them up when they do.

This poetic, evocative film version of the famous novel by Michael Ondaatje circles down through layers of mystery until all of the puzzles in the story have been solved, and only the great wound of a doomed love remains.

For all the film's effectiveness as a love story, I often felt I was being hurried through a busy itinerary.

A respectable, intelligent but less than stirring adaptation of an imposingly dense and layered novel.

The English Patient, the superb new film by Anthony Minghella, is that rarest of things: a film based on a great contemporary novel.

The whole film is permeated with tenderness for its hurt characters, whom Minghella sees as just a small slice in the fellowship of people who love and suffer.

This is one of the year's most unabashed and powerful love stories, using flawless performances, intelligent dialogue, crisp camera work, and loaded glances to attain a level of eroticism and emotional connection that many similar films miss.

The cast is superb: Binoche, with her thin, seraphic smile; Scott Thomas, aware of the spell she casts but not flaunting it; Fiennes, especially, radiating sexy mystery, threat shrouded in hauteur. Doom and drive rarely have so much stately star quality.

Get ready for the great romance of the movie year.

The English Patient captivates as only the grandest and most consuming passions can.

Overlong and stifling high-class desert war story that mixes a tearjerker romance with a beguiling mystery story.

Gorgeous looking and achingly romantic literary adaptation that showcases expert performances by Fiennes and Scott Thomas.

Out of each of these uprooted characters are spun stories of love, loyalty and betrayal.

The sand seems to drench the actors in deep golden light; the sky is a rich, muted blue, like a still and suspended sea.

Fiennes is solid, if occasionally a little remote, as the dashing man of action. But Kristin Scott Thomas is the film's revelation.

Among many achievements, John Seal's strikingly precise photography draws contrast, which is significant in the text, between sensual imagery of the adulterous affair between Fiennes and Scott Thomas and jarring images of desert wartime brutality.

Needless to say, the performances are flawless; more surprising is the fluency, poetry and scale of Minghella's direction.

It's a sweeping romance with many good aspects, but not enough to justify the time you spend watching.

Yes, it's beautifully shot, well-acted, and rich with history lessons. But how can we cheer for heroes who sell out their friends and nation for an extramarital affair?

This is a very sad movie, indeed -- but one filled with cinematic artistry.

As the sensitive Hana, Binoche delivers one of the most incandescent performances I've ever had the pleasure to watch.

It's Casablanca set amid the swirling Sahara sands of North Africa and the voluptuous hills of Tuscany.