Critic Reviews

A quietly devastating portrayal of family and theft in contemporary Japan.

It is a movie made up of delicate brushstrokes: details, moments, looks and smiles.

Shoplifters is compassionate, socially conscious filmmaking with a piercing intelligence that is pure Kore-eda. This is a film that steals in and snatches your heart.

Some of the credit must go to the stellar casting and performances. It’s difficult to single out one of the six actors in this alternative family unit as it’s a true ensemble display. But Kore-eda’s deft command of tone is a key factor too.

At once charming and heart-wrenching, this exquisitely performed film will steal the hearts of both art-house and mainstream audiences.

A tender ensemble piece whose skillful performances dovetail into a perfectly symphonic whole, Shoplifters is a work of such emotional delicacy and formal modesty that you're barely prepared when the full force of what it's doing suddenly knocks you sideways.

Every scene adds another onion-skinlike layer, adding density and mass so slowly that you hardly notice the emotional weight of it all until it is suddenly overwhelming.

The director, though, reaches in and steals your heart right in front of your eyes, like a magic trick, and you have to admit you didn’t even see it coming.

Master director Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose work won the Palm d’Or at Cannes this year, doesn’t pour on the emotion. He doesn’t need to – his film, even as it enchants, is quietly devastating.

For all its gentle groundedness, a quality that suffuses much of Kore-eda’s work, Shoplifters strenuously resists romanticizing its main characters. Its compassion is more convincing for it. So is its brilliance.