Metacritic reviews

Ably filmed by veteran stage producer-director Rowan Joseph, Bradley Rand Smith's theatrical script provides a bravura thespian workout for Ben McKenzie.

That's the real problem with this melodrama. Whether or not you agree with the pacifist message, the presentation is often overwrought and maudlin.

Filmed theater is an inherently dubious genre, and Johnny Got His Gun is little more than a good performance of dated material.

As his character battles to grasp his newly fractured sense of time, audiences may also find themselves more aware of the time, which seems to creep along at an alarmingly slow rate.

Reveals itself to be far too stagebound to function effectively onscreen.

As we find ourselves again immersed in a time of war, Trumbo's ageless story offers a useful corollary.

Trumbo's aim was a kind of proletarian poetry, but McKenzie's broad emoting has the deadly earnestness of a school play.

Watching the film, I did manage to retain my empathy for the narrator, though: I was as desperate as he was to escape the situation I was in.