Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Tomus7 It was totally engrossing and disturbing (and I mean this in a good way) but it seemed a little simplistic and manipulative. For example, the main bad guys had little nuance - they were pure evil (the mayor was the only character that was interesting). And the stoning scene was just too much. Yes, I understand that this really does happen, and that I should expect this in a movie with this title, but we just couldn't watch the whole, long stoning scene.

Alexandre Demarque I think this is one of the best movies I've watched! Interesting how it resumes all the bad sides of a human.This movie proves that death penalty should not be tolerated in any way, anywhere! And as a lawyer I think that just a single innocent life taken away by it is enough to make the justice look mocked. And I feel kind of guilty watching it now in 2013, whereas it was released back in 2008. Also, my favorite actress is playing in it - Shohreh Aghdashloo! Her voice is mysterious and I have an impression that that is a woman who has lived a thousand lives throughout the history!

mformoviesandmore To think that people can justify stoning a woman to death, especially in this day and age, leaves one with a heavy heart. But this is from a side of the world when some cut a boy's penis for religious reasons, others mutilate young girls clitoris's and other throw acid at woman or burn them.All of these are subjects that could disgust and audience and give rise to high credit for having brought them to public attention.So this movie undoubtedly gets high praise for the subject matter.But IMDb is a movie rating site. As a movie I felt that this had many shortcomings. It was too long. The story lost impact as it dragged on an on. The actresses, especially the elder one of the leads, seemed to come from the Bette Davis school of over-acting. As someone else put it - in the manner of day-time soap operas. After watching the superb "A Separation" I was hoping to experience another slice of Iranian life. I notice at the end of the movie it said that it was made on location in the Middle East. Iran is not in the middle east, though this particular incident was based on occurrences reported of an Iranian village and some of those involved in the making the movie have Iranian heritage.Will we ever live in a world where such atrocities no longer occur? As John Lennon said - Imagine.

sddavis63 This is, almost from the start, a painful movie, which by the end becomes an absolutely brutal movie and is almost all the way through a very frightening movie. Set during immediate post-revolutionary Iran, religious fervour (which has little to do with religion and almost everything to do with fervour) is running rampant. In the midst of that maelstrom, an already abusive husband decides that he wants to divorce his wife so that he can take up with another woman. But then he realizes that he'll have to support her, and so he concocts a story accusing her of adultery - the penalty for which is stoning. We watch as the husband engineers rumours and innuendo against his wife; we watch as the whispers become shouts and as suspicion becomes rage; we watch as almost an entire village turns against a woman that they all seem to know is innocent but whom they nevertheless choose to condemn, almost as if this warped action will prove their worthiness to God.It's a brilliant performance from Mozhan Marno as the accused and condemned Soraya. She knows that she's done nothing wrong; she has an almost naive conviction that eventually people will realize that. And yet it's clear that from the beginning this cannot be stopped. The momentum is too great; there's no way to put an end to it even if there was a desire to.In the end this becomes very graphic and bloody. It does, indeed, offer a brutal depiction of a stoning, and it pulls no punches as we watch a bloodied Soraya slowly die under the barrage of rocks thrown at her. As a viewer, you're left with a queasy stomach in stunned silence. In a way, although obviously the movies are very different, this reminded me just a little bit of "The Passion Of The Christ" - the bloodiness and inevitability of the end. Those who are remotely uneasy about bloodiness in a movie will want to avoid the last half hour of this. It is not for the feint of heart.The story is true - based on a book by a French-Iranian reporter played by James Caviezel. As the movie opens, he shows up in town on the day after the stoning needing his car repaired. The story is related to him and unfolds for us through the witness of Soraya's aunt (Shohreh Aghdashloo). As the movie ends, the reporter has to desperately escape the town as he's chased by a mob wanting to prevent him from smuggling the story to the outside world. This movie achieves a delicate balancing act. It shows the dangers of religious extremism, but doesn't come across as anti-Islam. Indeed, Islam is portrayed fairly here, Soraya herself and her aunt being faithful Muslims, who point out to the men their betrayal of Islam in what they're doing. It would have been easy to turn this into an anti- Muslim diatribe. It managed not to turn into that, becoming a critique, perhaps, of culture, and of the ability for less than honourable people to use religion for their own unworthy ends. (8/10)