Metacritic reviews

Brassed Off is a sweet film with a lot of anger at its core.

Brassed Off! is a traditional feel-good motion picture with an element of social commentary thrown in for good measure.

The characters are beautifully drawn in this bittersweet melodrama written and directed by Mark Herman.

Brassed Off is shamelessly manipulative and sentimental, but in an agreeably familiar way.

In the end, though, the undeniable power and emotional richness of this film swing the balance toward the good.

Brassed Off gets bogged down in sentimentality; and that political agenda is spread on thick.

Herman isn't sure if he's doing a big-statement picture or a tiny treasure of a comedy, and his confusion throws Brassed Off off balance.

Writer-director Mark Herman seems genuinely moved by the plight of the mining communities, but his attempt to translate those feelings into a story shows the effects of hard labor.

An odd duck of a movie, it's really a British Labor Party television commercial bitterly shoehorned into the cheesy format of an American triumph fantasy, with a horn section.

As well-meaning elegies go, especially ones to working stiffs prematurely ripped from their subterranean roots, Brassed Off is the pits: It's a miner opus in a minor key.