72
Metascore
7 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottA startlingly beautiful documentary by Bong-Nam Park that is also devastatingly sad.
- 80Time OutKeith UhlichTime OutKeith UhlichThe filmmaking is patient and participatory, getting down in the dirt with the workers (in one case the lens is even soaked by a spray of sludge) and allowing several touchingly distinct personalities to emerge.
- 75The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayThe A.V. ClubNoel MurrayThe movie has no story per se, and there are times when it does seem like Park is hovering, vulture-like, over his subjects' shoulders, waiting for a disaster. But Iron Crows isn't devoid of natural human exuberance, nor is it immune to the awesome spectacle of a dangerous job.
- 75NPRScott TobiasNPRScott TobiasIron Crows isn't the miserablist wallow you might expect. While director Park Bong-Nam observes the hazards of ship-breaking with a thoroughness that borders on fetishization, he also catches the humor and camaraderie of men in the trenches.
- 70Village VoiceNick PinkertonVillage VoiceNick PinkertonPark's view - clearly inscribed in his well-structured, practically chapter-headed ("After Hours," "Payday," "Back at the Village") documentary - is that the hideous working conditions and low wages are due to man-made avarice; the workers, though, tend toward a fatalism based in religious predestination.
- 38Slant MagazineJoseph Jon LanthierSlant MagazineJoseph Jon LanthierA maddeningly blunt and syrupy rendering of a piquant socio-economic configuration, Park Bong-Nam's Iron Crows is ultimately third-world documentary filmmaking at its most exploitatively surface-groping.