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Reviews Counted:27
Fresh:26
Rotten:1
Average Rating:7.7/10
Consensus: Though decidedly one-sided, The Cove is an impeccably crafted, suspenseful expose of the covert slaughter of dolphins in Japan.
Theatrical Release:Jul 31, 2009 Limited
Box Office: $619,467
Synopsis: The Cove is an astounding piece of investigative journalism with the heart of an action thriller. Led by Louie Psihoyos, leader of the Ocean Preservation Society, and Richard O'Barry, an... [More]
Director: Louie Psihoyos
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The Cove is guerrilla journalism at its best. Structured and paced by director Louie Psihoyos as a thriller/caper movie, it brings audience-grabbing cinematic conventions to work in telling its story of dolphin genocide
Top CriticAs the subject of a documentary, this grim enterprise distinctly lacks the warm and fuzzy appeal of The March of the Penguins. So director Louie Psihoyos ingeniously reinvents his film as a spy caper.
Top CriticThere are five minutes in this documentary that ought to be mandatory viewing. The entire 90 minutes is utterly compelling, but the five alone are worth the price of admission.
Top CriticPsihoyos and his team got the footage they were after -- thanks to meticulous planning, lots of furtive sneaking around and the judicious placement of underwater microphones and cameras disguised as rocks.
Top CriticBeyond the high-stakes game of cat and mouse, the film explores the mysterious relationship between humans and dolphins and the unexplainable connection between our two species.
Top CriticDirected by Louie Psihoyos, this well-intentioned documentary exposes the harvesting of dolphins by Japanese fishermen, yet its theatrics suggest a cross between reality TV and Mission: Impossible.
Top CriticThe Cove is one of the best in a growing class of nonfiction films
Top CriticThe Cove plays like the James Bond version of an environmental doc. It could also be viewed as a horror movie for the carnage it depicts. Yet it's quite simply one of the year's best movies.
Top CriticIt is filmmaking not just in the service of the environment, but in the service of a victim, and while that victim may have flippers and fins, it is straight from central casting.
Top CriticThrilling, impassioned and suspenseful as a spy caper, The Cove could launch a new sensibility for environmental documentaries.
Top CriticThe Cove is a thriller in a classical sense. It’s the first of these movies to tell a story with more than stock footage and on-camera interviews. It also smartly refracts a major ethical, ecological problem through the prism of guerrilla events.
Top CriticA gripping thriller about dolphin trafficking, The Cove is an eco-mentary that's as passionate and persuasive an argument for change as An Inconvenient Truth.
Top CriticThere are many documentaries angry about the human destruction of the planetary peace. This is one of the very best -- a certain Oscar nominee.
Top CriticTwo fins up for The Cove, a documentary that whales on evil Japanese fishermen who kill dolphins for lunch meat.
Top CriticThe Cove's story of a quiet village in Japan that specializes in clandestine dolphin slaughter is quite consciously structured as a thriller by director Louie Psihoyos who won an audience award for it at Sundance.
Top CriticThis film is less a work of journalism than a call to activism; movies like The Cove, to a certain extent, preach to the converted.
Top CriticThe film makes its case graphically, to say the least, yet muddies its bloody waters with an excess of artifice and a dearth of facts.
Top CriticThe movie is a Trojan horse: an exceptionally well-made documentary that unfolds like a spy thriller, complete with bugged hotel rooms, clandestine derring-do and mysterious men in gray flannel suits.
Top CriticIt has the breathless pace of a Bourne movie, but none of the comfort of fiction. This is documentary filmmaking at its most exciting and purposeful.
Top CriticThe effectiveness of The Cove also comes from its explosive cinematic craft, its surprising good humor and its pure excitement.
Top Critic
November 19, 2009:
Academy Releases Documentary Shortlist 
Awards season is just around the corner, and to prove it, the Academy just released its list of the 15 films still vying for a Documentary Feature Oscar. More...
August 13, 2009:
Green Docs Finding Box Office a Hostile Environment
They have timely topics, great buzz, and meaningful messages -- so why are environmental documentaries like "The Cove" struggling to find theatrical audiences? More...
July 30, 2009:
Critics Consensus: Funny People Is Ambitious But Uneven
This week at the movies, we've got the tears of a clown (Funny People, starring Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen), extra-terrestrial visitors upstairs (Aliens in the Attic, starring... More...
June 21, 2009:
Trailer & Poster review
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