Rust and BoneMovie Reviews

Avg. Critic Score: 73 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore^® based on all critic reviews

Information for Parents:

not for kids

Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

100

Philadelphia Inquirer | Steven Rea
The narrative at the heart of Rust and Bone is a vehicle for sentiment and over-the-top histrionics if ever there was one, but Audiard and his two stars deliver the exact opposite: a film thrillingly raw and essential, life-affirming, sublime. Read full review
90

NPR |
Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone is an unapologetic melodrama rendered in what you might call semi-stylized neo-expressionistic realism, and it works like gangbusters. Read full review
75

Rolling Stone | Peter Travers
Writer-director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet) probes the psyches of two people in crisis. His hypnotic film means to shake you, and does. Schoenaerts reveals unexpected layers in Ali. And Cotillard delivers a tour de force of unleashed emotions. She's astonishing. Read full review
75

San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle
A tough movie about tough people for a tough audience. So prepare to get roughed up a little. Read full review
75

Boston Globe | Ty Burr
The leads save it, particularly Cotillard, who once again subverts her own glamour with ferocious lack of ego. The movie itself only occasionally matches her intensity. Read full review
70

The Hollywood Reporter | Todd McCarthy
Absorbing if somewhat predictable in its dramatic trajectory, Jacques Audiard's follow-up to his powerhouse prison yarn "A Prophet" benefits from unvarnished, forthright performances from Marion Cotillard and Bullhead hunk Matthias Schoenaerts, as well as from the utterly convincing representation of the former's paraplegic state. Read full review
63

USA Today | Claudia Puig
This gritty examination of physical and psychological wounds offers a superb performance by Marion Cotillard, who speaks volumes with her eyes, and a less convincing one by her lead co-star. Read full review
50

Wall Street Journal | Joe Morgenstern
Why are certain films less than the sum of their appealing parts? Read full review
50

Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman
Cotillard, with stringy long hair and a coal fire of severity in her eyes, has what it takes to play a woman who feels that she's lost everything. But she's forced to flail and mood-swing from scene to scene. In an insult to the disabled, there is never much to her but her hellacious injury. Read full review
40

New York Daily News | Joe Neumaier
Though Rust and Bone aims for a blasé attitude toward disabled drama - in a far more artificial way than another French film, "The Intouchables," did earlier this year - it's underwritten characters and hoary approach plunk it into mediocrity. As wheelchair-bound Stephanie practices her whale-training motions to Katy Perry's "Firework," it's eye-rollingly obvious. Read full review

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Information for Parents

Common Sense Media says not for kids Lyrical and gritty French drama for mature viewers only.

What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that Rust and Bone is an oddly beautiful combination of brutality and beauty that explores some very difficult subjects, including what it's like to lose your limbs, to not know how to be a parent, to be tossing around in a hard scrabble world with a young child you aren't equipped to raise, and how hard it is to tame a beast when the beast is yourself or someone you love very much. There's also full-frontal nudity (albeit briefly), quick flashes of intense sex scenes, swearing (in French with English subtitles), smoking, and drinking. Some fight scenes are bloody and gritty and show faces kicked and beaten to a pulp. But the film also has tons of hope and is made with great care and honesty.

Families can talk about how Rust and Bone compares to American romantic dramas. Do Europeans have a different approach to the genre? Are there any commonalities?
How does the movie portray the challenges of parenthood? Does it seem realistic? Is Ali a good father? Why or why not?
Why do you think Stephanie is drawn to Ali, and vice versa? What do they have in common?

The good stuff

Positive messages: Hope springs in the direst of places -- such as months after a horrific accident or when a person causes a loved one to lose her job. You might be in the depths, but there's always one sure way to go: up.
Positive role models: Stephanie is a fighter and a survivor in more ways than one. Ali is rougher around the edges, but he does feel a compulsion to do better, even if he doesn't always know how.

What to watch for

Violence: Fairly brutal, bloody beatings take place at secret fights where spectators egg the competitors on to hit and cripple one another. Teeth are lost, heads are bashed, bodies are bruised and battered. There's also a scene in which a whale crashes into a stand and, later, attacks its handler; there's blood in the water. Close-ups of wounds, injuries, and gashes. A man screams and grabs his child, and he accidentally hits his forehead on a piece of furniture. A child is shown as if he's drowning. A woman throws glasses at men in bars, cutting their faces. Men leer at her, eye her body openly, and say brazen, disrespectful things to her.
Sexy stuff: Full-frontal nudity, with a man's genitals and a woman's pubic hair briefly shown. A man's backside is glimpsed often, sometimes while he's straddling a woman. A woman's breasts are shown both from afar and in close-up, sometimes during what appears to be sex. Quick flashes of intercourse (though genitalia aren't seen then).
Language: Relatively infrequent use of words including "f--k," "s--t," "bitch," damn," and "a--hole." The words are said in French and subtitled in English.
Consumerism: Some brands shown, but they're mostly French companies that may not be familiar to American audiences. More recognizable labels seen include Under Armour and Nike.
Drinking, drugs and smoking: Some cigarette smoking and drinking, sometimes to the point of inebriation.

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