Metacritic reviews

To Kill A Mockingbird is a product of American realism, and it is a rare and worthy treasure.

Storytelling doesn't get much better than this.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a major film achievement, a significant, captivating and memorable picture that ranks with the best of recent years.

As Mulligan so deftly demonstrates, the story is in the characters, their failings and fragility, their heroism and nobility of spirit. It's in the depiction of heart-breaking cruelty and heart-warming humanity. It's in the innocence of a child's world overshadowed by the evil that adults do.

One of the year's most fetching and affecting pictures.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a faithful adaptation of one of the 20th century's most important American works of literature. It is also a masterpiece in its own right. This is one of those rare productions where everything is in place - a superior script, a perfect cast, and a director who has a clear vision and achieves what he sets out to do.

There is not only artistry in the development of the story - there is beauty, sympathy and emotional appeal in almost every scene.

Their charming enactments of a father and his children in that close relationship that can occur at only one brief period are worth all the footage of the film.

A hauntingly nostalgic portrayal of childhood mischief set in a racially divided Alabama town in the 1930s. If the film's tone sometimes seems overly righteous, it's offset by a poetic lyricism that is difficult to resist embracing.

To Kill a Mockingbird, set in Maycomb, Alabama, in 1932, uses the realities of its time only as a backdrop for the portrait of a brave white liberal.