Hail (2011 film)

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 71% of 10 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.4/10.^[4]

The Age's critic Philippa Hawker described the film as "singular and striking", noting it "has an extreme sense of documentary fidelity but it is intercut with a kind of hallucinatory, over-reaching, vivid excess: it's a fierce, sometimes harrowing combination of the real and the surreal, the visceral and the abstract."^[2] Richard Kuipers wrote on Variety: "pic boasts a relatively conventional storyline peppered with heavy verbal violence, trippy visual metaphors and a cacophonous soundtrack that mark it as a strictly outre item for dedicated arthouse buffs".^[5] Film critic Megan Lehmann described the film as "dissonant and brutal, but also unexpectedly tender", "a risky piece of experimental cinema" that "melds coarse reality, extreme close-ups, nightmarish montages [...] and a soundtrack that’s alternately jarring and lovely".^[3]

The film ranked third in The Guardian's list of the best Australian films of the 2010s.^[6]

• Hail at IMDb