Metacritic reviews

Giant stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the great ones.

GIANT confirms Taylor's skills as an actress; she's entirely believable even when she ages by just having her hair greyed.

Key to Giant‘s enduring appeal is the meshing of outsize stars with Ferber’s characters: Closeted sex symbol Hudson’s towering Bick fills the big boots of his ranching family while struggling with the demands of traditional masculine authority. The taboo-breaking Taylor is the seductive, whip-smart Leslie, an assured reformer who views the injustices visited upon the ranch’s Mexican workers with maternal concern...And then there’s Dean’s most mannered, complex performance: Jett is at once transparent and enigmatic, hardening with age while the other characters mature. The actor’s death — a year before release — adds a keen poignancy to the character’s lost potential.

Thanks to Mr. Stevens' brilliant structure and handling of images, every scene and every moment is a pleasure. He makes "picture" the essence of his film.

It is also, for the most part, an excellent film which registers strongly on all levels, whether it's in its breathtaking panoramic shots of the dusty Texas plains; the personal, dramatic impact of the story itself, or the resounding message it has to impart.

In spite of the three-and-a-half-hour running time and the stark southwestern landscapes, Giant studies little moments more intently than monumental ones, and dwells in drawing rooms as much as on the range.

Aggressive editing could have shortened Giant considerably, but the three hour twenty-one minute running time permits the tale to breathe. And, even at this length, there are times when events feel rushed or compressed... So, although Giant may not be a classic in the purest sense of the word, it's a fine example of a virtually-extinct genre.

Sitting through it is like cramming a decade’s worth of daily television-watching into a single sitting.

Much of it is awful, but it's almost impossible not to be taken in by the narrative sprawl: like many big, bad movies, Giant is an enveloping experience, with a crazy life and logic of its own.

The pace is so plodding, and the general effect so stultifyingly unsubtle, that one is left impressed only by the fine landscape photography and Dean's surprisingly convincing portrayal of a middle-aged man.