Review Roundup: Kevin Costner Stars in BLACK OR WHITE

Kevin Costner stars in the new drama BLACK OR WHITE, which opens nationwide today. The film premiered at the Toronto FIlm Festival in 2014, and was written and directed by Mike Binder.

The story follows a widowed man named Elliot (Costner) who has raised his African-American granddaughter after his own daughter died during childbirth. But when the child's grandmother demands that she be raised by her drug-addict son since he is the biological father, Elliot needs to find a way to keep custody of his only remaining family.

BLACK OR WHITE stars Kevin Costner, Octavia Spencer, Gillian Jacobs, Jennifer Ehle, Anthony Mackie, and Bill Burr.

Let's see what the critics had to say!

Stephen Holden, New York Times: The movie is so wary of alienating audiences that only at the very end does it explode into violence...That's the point at which "Black or White" surrenders to mawkish Hollywood convention and is much the worse for it. Sad to say, this is a movie that is ultimately afraid of its own shadow.

Scott Foundas, Variety: The bad news is that this well-intentioned family drama never quite shakes free from its didactic, movie-of-the-week dramaturgy and a hand-holding approach to race-relations that's as if "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" had been made only five minutes ago.

Zaki Hasan, Huffington Post: While it attempts some measure of high-minded resolution to the many complicated issues it raises, it's simply casting too wide a net to feel truly satisfying. In trying to be color blind, it just comes off as tone deaf.

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Good acting and plenty to think about, but a better director than Mike Binder would have made a better film.

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The overall story...has a kind of dramatic inertia that undercuts observations about race and class, and the intriguing notion of a child raised in two very different worlds.

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Sometimes flawed material can be saved by great performances and good intentions. That's the case with "Black or White," a racial melodrama that, until it stumbles into obvious and maudlin territory, is a thoughtful work thanks to Octavia Spencer, Anthony Mackie and especially Kevin Costner.

Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times: Whether Costner makes the awards cut or not, it's a pleasure to watch the veteran actor so deftly traverse the vanity-free demands of such a flawed, authentic, toughly sympathetic character.

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Gate: To put it simply, people may be right and people may be wrong, but there are no right races or wrong races. A writer-director who chooses to have characters representing race and not themselves alone paints himself into a corner in which everyone in the movie absolutely must come out all right.

Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter: While the acting is strong and the storytelling smoothly handled, there's nothing all that distinguishing about the direction itself, and the film often has the look and feel of something made in the early 1990's...

Inkoo Kang, The Wrap: f I were as unfair as writer-director Mike Binder...is to his African-American characters in his new movie "Black or White," I'd say this project is a white filmmaker's rationalization to have a white character occasionally say (and certainly think) the N-word while raising a black child.

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