Review Roundup: Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter & Meryl Streep Star in SUFFRAGETTE

Inspired by true events, SUFFRAGETTE movingly explores the passion and heartbreak of those who risked all they had for women's right to vote - their jobs, their homes, their children, and even their lives. The stirring story centers on Maud, a working wife and mother who becomes an activist for the Suffragette cause alongside women from all walks of life.

Academy Award nominees Carey Mulligan (Broadway's THE SEAGULL, SKYLIGHT) and Helena Bonham Carter (SWEENY TODD, LES MISERABLES), and three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep (Broadway's THE CHERRY ORCHARD, HAPPY END), lead the cast of the powerful drama about the fight for equality in early-20th-century Britain.

SUFFRAGETTE is directed by BAFTA Award winner Sarah Gavron and written by Emmy Award winner Abi Morgan.

Let's see what the critics had to say!

A.O. Scott, New York Times: "Suffragette" is an admirably modest movie. It does not quite have the grandeur and force of "Selma," and the script has a few too many glowingly emotive speeches. The final turns of the tale are suspenseful, but also a bit frantic. But it is also stirring and cleareyed - the best kind of history lesson.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: There are times when the movie piles on troubles with too heavy a hand. At other times, Suffragette blazes with a fire that cannot be denied. And you see it all on Mulligan's wonderfully expressive face. For all the rich detail added by cinematographer Edu Grau, production designer Alice Normington and costume designer Jane Petrie, it is that human face that makes this feminist history relatable to this generation and to generations to come. In a sea of Hollywood escapism, Suffragette - flaws and all - is a movie that matters.

Justin Chang, Variety: "Deeds, not words," goes the refrain of "Suffragette," a stolidly well-meaning tribute to the handful of brave women who realized that polite, law-abiding protests weren't going to get them very far in the battle for voting rights in early 20th-century Britain. But while it boasts no shortage of dramatic activity as it lays bare the challenges and consequences of civil disobedience, this collaboration between director Sarah Gavron and screenwriter Abi Morgan doesn't exactly uphold that mantra, insofar as it never seems to deviate from a neatly pre-packaged script of its own. As a lowly wife and mother slowly grabbing hold of her difficult destiny, Carey Mulligan gives an affecting, skillfully modulated performance that lends a certain coherence to this assemblage of real-life incidents, composite characters, noble sentiments, stirring speeches and impeccable production values - all marshaled in service of a picture whose politics prove rather more commendable than its artistry.

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair: Sometimes a movie is so polite, so upstanding and solidly well-intentioned, that it's hard to criticize it, or like it. Not a bad movie-a perfectly fine movie-but one so safely made, so engineered to swell and stir the hearts of audiences (or Academy voters) that it forgets to have any real point of view. We get one or two of these movies, very often biopics or historical dramas, pretty much every awards season, earnest middle-of-the-roaders that sometimes get a little heat, but more often simply come and go after a few modest notices. This year, perhaps no movie better fits that particular bill than Suffragette, Sarah Gavron's sturdy, unthrilling book report about the women's-suffrage movement in Great Britain.

Catherine Shoard, The Guardian: But Suffragette doesn't just exist on its own terms, but in its own time, too; it's a peculiarly hermetic watch - the first world war, for instance, goes unmentioned. Gavron has made a decent film with near horizons, a civil disobedience picture that's not as politely produced as you'd think. But a classic? I abstain.

Sara Stewart, New York Post: Shortcomings aside, the well-intentioned "Suffragette" will hopefully pave the way for more films on the movement - which, the credits remind us, is not exactly ancient history: Saudi Arabia is taking steps toward voting equality just this year.

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly: Speaking of history, Suffragette certainly puts a lot of it on its fictional heroine's shoulders. Probably too much. Exploited at work, marginalized at home, brutalized in prison, and emotionally put through the wringer as a mother, Mulligan's Maud is marched through virtually every station of the cross when it comes to suffering. It's as if Gavron and writer Abi Morgan didn't trust their story enough and stacked the deck to justify Maud's feminist awakening when no justification is required. It's enough that women were treated as second-class citizens in a civilized country. As a result, Suffragetteends up feeling a bit melodramatic and manipulative, heavy-handed in the moments it should be most human. Fortunately, standing out among the film's sea of black coats and brimmed hats is Mulligan's more-subtle-than-her-surroundings performance. With one look into her expressive, heartbroken eyes, you know exactly what she's fighting for.

Stephen Farber, Hollywood Reporter: A lushly appointed period piece about the women's suffrage movement in England in the early 20th century sounds like Masterpiece Theatre fodder, polite and tasteful and a bit pallid. The surprise ofSuffragette is how much anger and urgency it contains, and how much new material it unearths. Many people may have forgotten that the fight for women's rights once involved the same danger as other battles for equality, like the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. This eye-opening and fierce drama should attract awards attention and even healthy box-office returns from older audiences who may get a bit more than they bargained for.

Pete Hammond, Deadline: The film meticulously chronicles the overall movement, and the sheer heroism of those who joined, by focusing its sights on particular women, but mainly Watts who is inspiring in giving up so much for a cause that overtakes the life she thought she had. It's an eye-opening film on a subject I have barely ever thought about, but it really brings home the fact that simple things like voting and equality were hard-fought struggles all over the world. In fact, the movie's most moving section actually comes as the end credits begin to roll. That is when a crawl of hundreds of countries rolls by with the year that women won the right to vote. Astonishingly that crawl leads all the way to today with Saudi Arabia pending. How far we have come, but how far we still have to go.

Max Nicholson, IGN: As a period story, Suffragette effectively recounts the harrowing women's suffrage movement of early-20th century Britain, where women were locked away and tortured for demanding equal rights. As a current piece of filmmaking, the female-starring, female-written and female-directed drama couldn't come at a better time, as the conversation of gender imbalance in Hollywood and abroad reaches a crescendo in our own modern society.

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