34
Metascore
17 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 50Slant MagazineOleg IvanovSlant MagazineOleg IvanovThe film is an awkward mix of swashbuckling love story and polemic, painted in very broad strokes.
- 50Movie NationRoger MooreMovie NationRoger MooreBitter Harvest never amounts to more than a colorful misfire, a picture with much of the pageant of the period, but little of the roiling passions that dominate politics in the Breadbasket of Europe, even today.
- 50Boston GlobePeter KeoughBoston GlobePeter KeoughAs the film darkens, it intensifies its focus on tragedy and atrocity and begins to do some justice to one of the largest and least known genocides in history.
- 42The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyThe A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyEven if it weren’t about an atrocity, this training-wheels Doctor Zhivago would still be lame.
- 40Village VoicePete Vonder HaarVillage VoicePete Vonder HaarA subject like the Holodomor demands something more than a TV-movie aesthetic and pitched battle scenes featuring a couple dozen combatants.
- 40Time Out LondonCath ClarkeTime Out LondonCath ClarkeThis forgotten chapter of history deserves to be better told.
- 40Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzArizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzBitter Harvest, bless its low-budget heart, means well. But George Mendeluk’s film, about the Holodomor, the forced famine and starvation that killed between 7 and 10 million Ukrainians, falls well short of its ambitions.
- 38The Seattle TimesTom KeoghThe Seattle TimesTom KeoghDespite the stakes, Mendeluk can’t scare up any particular urgency, largely because everything is so contrived and inauthentic.
- 37Washington PostMichael O'SullivanWashington PostMichael O'SullivanThere ought to be no lack of firepower in telling this shameful tale. Too often, however, Bitter Harvest is guilty of overkill.
- 30Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAustin ChronicleMarc SavlovIt’s a history lesson wrapped up in a romance, gallows grim but far too often unnecessarily heavy-handed in a way that drives home the factual historical horrors it portrays while somehow managing to feel like a sizably budgeted but no less maladroit television movie of the week.