83
Metascore
40 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100VarietyDavid RooneyVarietyDavid RooneyMike Leigh is at the peak of his powers with Vera Drake, a compassionate, morally complex drama that stands easily alongside his best work, "Secrets & Lies" and "Topsy-Turvy."
- 100Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanVera Drake puts the passion in compassion. Building up to a shattering conclusion, Leigh's movie is both outrageously schematic and powerfully humanist.
- 100Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumStunning and compassionate period drama.
- 100Christian Science MonitorDavid SterrittChristian Science MonitorDavid SterrittThe acting is brilliant and Leigh's screenplay - developed through his usual process of improvisation and rehearsal - is very long on compassion, very short on preaching and politics.
- 90The New York TimesManohla DargisThe New York TimesManohla DargisThe English director Mike Leigh's best work in a decade.
- 88Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversUsing Staunton's face as his canvas, Leigh crafts a powerfully moving film that is unmissable and unforgettable.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterThe Hollywood ReporterIt's difficult to think of another recent film so seamlessly rendered or that envelops an audience so completely in its period authenticity.
- 80The New YorkerDavid DenbyThe New YorkerDavid DenbyMarvellous, though it is smaller in emotional range than such earlier Mike Leigh films as the goofy bourgeois satire "High Hopes" (1988), the candid and piercing "Secrets & Lies" (1996), and the splendid theatrical spectacle "Topsy-Turvy" (1999).
- 60SalonCharles TaylorSalonCharles TaylorWhen one of the young women Vera attends to nearly dies of complications, the police arrest her -- and the movie goes thud, taking Staunton's performance along with it.
- 40Film ThreatPhil HallFilm ThreatPhil HallThe film's screenplay is thick with major lapses in logic, resulting in a story that ultimately makes little sense.