54
Metascore
14 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- Unjustly underrated upon its release, GARDENS OF STONE is a quiet, respectful film filled with emotional power, exceptional acting (especially by Caan), and technical virtuosity.
- 70ColliderColliderIt's certainly not Francis Ford Coppola's most well-known war movie, but Gardens of Stone is a pretty decent one, and does feel somewhat underrated.
- 63Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertGardens of Stone is content to be a slice of life, a story that says some of our best young people went to Vietnam and died there, and those who knew them missed them. We knew that already. Perhaps there is nothing else to be said, but this movie seems to give promise of seeing more deeply, and then it doesn't. Every moment is right, and yet the film as a whole is incomplete.
- 60EmpireKim NewmanEmpireKim NewmanAlthough downbeat, this celebration of the US military is done so expertly you forget that at the time it is set Coppola's idea of a great film was You're A Big Boy Now.
- Though Coppola sticks to the principal narrative line and resists tangential, anecdotal episodes, he might as well have gone off in those directions for all the coherence he ultimately achieves.
- 50Washington PostHal HinsonWashington PostHal HinsonBased on the novel by Nicholas Proffitt, it's been written for the screen (by Ronald Bass, who also wrote "Black Widow") in a flatfooted comic-book style, and about halfway through the whole thing collapses in a heap. But, for a while at least, it's eminently watchable.
- 50Washington PostDesson ThomsonWashington PostDesson ThomsonJames Earl Jones, James Caan and D.B. Sweeney turn in superior performances in "Gardens of Stone," but it's all for naught. Francis Coppola sabotages their efforts with a handsome but fragmentary film that can't decide which story to tell.
- Solemn, inchoate and close to complete enervation, Francis Coppola`s ”Gardens of Stone” seems less a movie than a depressive symptom–a mass of feelings that Coppola has been unable to transform into art.
- 40The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyThough a seriously conceived film about the American experience in Vietnam, Gardens of Stone has somehow wound up having the consistency and the kick of melted vanilla ice cream.