Matt Brunson Film Frenzy Dec 27, 2025 4/4

One of the great films of its decade.

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Rob Reuteman Denver Rocky Mountain News Aug 21, 2025

By portraying the perpetrators of near-genocide as a pack of screaming, gun-poking ninnies, director Roland Joffe fails to put a human face on the evils that are wrought.

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Mike Massie Gone With The Twins Mar 2, 2025 7/10

By the end, when an anticipated convergence finally transpires, it’s quite the moment – an against-all-odds type of tear-jerking finale that helps to redeem many of the lulls from before.

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Molly Haskell Vogue Feb 27, 2020

This is one of the quietest "war" movies ever made; yet, it's an indelible portrait of the excitement, horror, and confusion with which journalists experience war.

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Barbara Shulgasser Common Sense Media May 8, 2018 4/5

Intense, violent movie about brutal Cambodian regime.

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Paul Attanasio Washington Post Jan 4, 2018

... a visually arresting epic guaranteed to capture the hearts and minds of its audience.

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Adrian Turner Radio Times Sep 16, 2015 5/5

Few feature films have captured a nation's agony more dramatically than Roland Joff's The Killing Fields.

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David Sterritt Christian Science Monitor Sep 16, 2015

[A] gripping, intelligent, provocative drama.

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Peter Travers People Magazine Sep 16, 2015

If you see no more than one film a year, make this the one for 1984.

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Dan Jardine Cinemania Jan 9, 2015 82/100

Ngor's naturalistic and empathic portrayal of his character's desperate fight for survival is the key to this film's visceral power.

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Noel Murray The Dissolve Jan 13, 2014 4/5

Every scene of The Killing Fields (and every participant in its making) is in service of showing how abruptly a seemingly safe and vital individual can have everything essential stripped away.

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Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews Jun 7, 2011 A-

A gripping romanticized and somewhat fictionalized adaptation of an eyewitness magazine piece by New York Times journalist Sidney Schanberg.

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Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com Mar 12, 2011 B+

The movie is too conventional and fictionalized to qualify as a genuine political epic, but it's emotionally touching in describing the friendship between the NY Times reporter and his Cambodian translator.

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Pablo Villaça Cinema em Cena Apr 15, 2009 4/5

Se a primeira metade impressiona pelo virtuosismo tcnico, a segunda fascina pela coragem em observar sem sensacionalismo a magnfica fora de vontade de um sobrevivente, beneficiando-se ainda da maravilhosa performance semi-auto-biogrfica de Ngor.

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Richard Schickel TIME Magazine Aug 25, 2008

It must be nerve-racking for the producers to offer a tale so lacking in standard melodramatic satisfactions. But the result is worth it, for this is the clearest film statement yet on how the nature of heroism has changed in this totalitarian century.

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Sean Axmaker Stream on Demand May 14, 2008

[Director Roland] Joffe came from TV and stage and he shoots the drama with an unforced realism, lent a terrible grace by the handsome images and smooth, unobtrusive long takes of cinematographer Chris Menges ...

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Dave Kehr Chicago Reader Apr 9, 2008

The screen is swamped by a bathetic, self-preening sententiousness.

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Variety Staff Variety Apr 9, 2008

The intent and outward trappings are all impressively in place, but at its heart there's something missing.

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David Kaplan Kaplan vs. Kaplan Mar 1, 2008 5/5

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Geoff Andrew Time Out Feb 9, 2006

The film's overall thrust -- angry, intelligent, compassionate -- makes this producer Puttnam's finest movie to date.

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