Like Green Book, The Blind Side, The Soloist and so on, Burden fits too snugly into the white-saviour mode of storytelling. Which is a shame, because everyone involved here is doing their best in trying to craft layered characters with compelling agendas.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 27, 2020

What is Burden teaching us or telling us about race in America that we don't already know from decades of history or decades of cinema?

Full Review | Mar 25, 2020

"Burden" does a great job of giving the viewer a look at the lives of those in the KKK beyond their hatred, but it misses the mark on making an impact on the viewer.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 5, 2020

"Burden" is a film of integrity, with something even better than a social conscience. It has a social purpose. If you see it, you'll learn something.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 3, 2020

Writer and director Andrew Heckler has managed to make a powerful film, if not a very subtle one.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 3, 2020

[Garrett Hedlund's] performance is 70 percent just him swaying back and forth. I never found him to be at all convincing.

Full Review | Feb 29, 2020

I think it has a great cast and there are some good performances, but I thought at times the direction wasn't great and it veered into that white savior territory.

Full Review | Feb 29, 2020

We're going to make an entire movie about the redemption of one guy in the Klan? I just don't think that's where the effort should go even if it should turn out as a fairly decent effort in the filmmaking itself.

Full Review | Feb 29, 2020

The sense that a lot of these characters have been reduced to their narrative purpose destroys the world that Burden needed to create to work.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 28, 2020

A compelling true story about the redemption of a Klansman (a very fine Garrett Hedlund) is well-intentioned but dramatically wobbly and simplistic.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 28, 2020

Siding with the angels can seem like a snap in films, but "Burden" has the grace to show how difficult and wrenching a choice that can be.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2020

But that's the extent of the thoughtfulness in this overly simplistic piece of Southern poverty porn, which asks questions it's not really prepared to answer and proceeds from a set of dubious assumptions that undermine whatever nuance it does possess.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Feb 27, 2020

Though the themes of "Burden" feel uncomfortably current, their execution is leaden and dismayingly artless.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2020

Production design from Stephanie Hamilton is another highlight, and the film feels pulled directly out of a very specific time and place; Jeremy Rouse's cinematography is gorgeous without being at all showy.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jan 31, 2018

Its narrative focus leans the movie toward having more of a white-savior complex, even though that does make Garrett Hedlund's portrayal of Burden a very complicated type of hero.

Full Review | Jan 27, 2018

Hedlund leans so heavily on Mike's bobbing physicality that the audience nearly gets seasick. Still, it's an unselfish performance from a strong young actor who's been devoting his career to tough parts that don't ask for applause.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jan 26, 2018

The writer-director's inexperience behind the camera is all too evident, as the painful but ultimately cathartic tale bumps along for more than two hours without ever finding an aesthetic form.

Full Review | Jan 22, 2018