85
Metascore
28 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanNot just the year's most impressive first feature but also the strongest new movie of any kind I've seen in 2010.
- 100Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumIt took writer-director Samuel ''Shmulik'' Maoz nearly 30 years to make this disturbing, visceral, personal film.
- 100The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottLebanon is meticulous, nearly clinical in its attention to what happens in war -- specifically what happened in the first days of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 -- but it is also a palpably and intensely personal film.
- 90Boxoffice MagazinePam GradyBoxoffice MagazinePam GradyThe performances are spot on and so is the film's ever growing sense of horror.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterThe Hollywood ReporterThe emotional traumas of young Israeli soldiers drafted into the war with Lebanon in the 1980s are recounted through the eyes of a tank crew in this wrenching concentration of raw emotion directed by Samuel Maoz.
- 80Time OutJoshua RothkopfTime OutJoshua RothkopfVery little gets in the way of Lebanon's apocalyptic mood; if it turns its audience even slightly away from barbarism, it might have done its job.
- 75New York PostV.A. MusettoNew York PostV.A. MusettoLebanon is inspired by the director's traumatic days at the front, giving his work a sense of authority.
- 70VarietyDerek ElleyVarietyDerek ElleyVisceral, torn-from-the-memory filmmaking that packs every punch except one to the heart, Lebanon is the boldest and best of the recent mini-wave of Israeli pics ("Beaufort," "Waltz With Bashir") set during conflicts between the two countries.
- 60New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierNew York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierDirector Samuel Maoz's gripping you-are-there feel does for tanks what "Das Boot" did for submarines, and that chokehold only gets tighter as this taut drama about the 1982 Israeli-Lebanese war goes on.
- 50The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe film's visceral assault extends to the sledgehammer script, an amassment of unsubtle ironies and war-is-hell clichés that often reduce it to an amateurish theatrical stunt.