The Criterion Collection

According to critics, rarely has a film so skillfully combined poetry and atrocity as in Hunger, Steve McQueen’s astonishing Cannes award winner about Bobby Sands’s 1981 hunger strike at Northern Ireland’s Maze prison, now available in Criterion Blu-ray and DVD editions. “As brutal and harrowing as much of the film is . . . the movie has astonishing lyrical beauty as well,” writes Paper’s Dennis Dermody. “Michael Fassbender’s (Inglourious Basterds, Fish Tank) physical and emotional transformations are extraordinary.” In a review for Entertainment Weekly, Chris Nashawaty gives McQueen’s film an A and calls it a “gut punch,” going on to praise Fassbender’s “unshakable, Bale-esque skin-and-bones performance.”

Film.com’s MaryAnn Johanson calls Hunger “a hard, harsh film—powerfully cinematic,” and exclaims, “Hurrah for Criterion, for taking on this extraordinary film and giving it to us in a spectacular home version.” And at IFC.com, Michael Atkinson says it’s “a masterpiece . . . Hunger is a historical scald, a chillingly powerful portrait of state violence, a serious import about authentic political rebellion that frankly contemplates the psyches of both the oppressed and the victimizers, and one of last year’s best films by any measure.”