Critic Reviews

Mike Leigh is at the peak of his powers with Vera Drake, a compassionate, morally complex drama that stands easily alongside his best work, "Secrets & Lies" and "Topsy-Turvy."

Vera Drake puts the passion in compassion. Building up to a shattering conclusion, Leigh's movie is both outrageously schematic and powerfully humanist.

Stunning and compassionate period drama.

The acting is brilliant and Leigh's screenplay - developed through his usual process of improvisation and rehearsal - is very long on compassion, very short on preaching and politics.

A marvel of character-driven drama that no serious filmgoer should miss.

Among its many excellences, Vera Drake functions superbly as a pure thriller; the last half is reminiscent in structure and detail of Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man."

Few movies have evoked the happiness of a good, strong family as genuinely as this one. And this affecting atmosphere makes the eventual outcome resonate with great power.

This is the kind of people-driven story that the movies used to give us - before special effects took over.

In absorbing drama and staggering emotions, it renders an issue too often seen as black or white in heartbreaking gray.

The strength of Leigh's film is that it is not a message picture, but a deep and true portrait of these lives.