Metacritic reviews

Sentimental without being corny, a tearjerker with dignity. The Great Santini is a movie to seek out and to treasure.

Robert Duvall gives an excellent portrayal of a semi-psychotic, softened with a warmer side. But Duvall has to fight for every inch of footage against the overwhelming performances by several others in the cast - and that's the strength of The Great Santini.

Though its emotions are big, the performances are so nicely nuanced that sentiment never overwhelms the story's emotional realism.

Mr. Duvall, Miss Danner and Mr. O'Keefe are the main reasons you should see The Great Santini. They play together with the kind of ease and self-assurance that, in a movie, is as exhilarating as it is rare.

Despite the artificial ending, The Great Santini is a powerfully written and acted movie. [03 Oct 1980, p.22]

The Great Santini deserves praise for its willingness to look long, hard, and seriously at a realistic family situation -- a willingness too rarely found at a time when most films are obsessed with futile fantasies. [07 Aug 1980, p.19]

For all its awkwardness and mawkishness, Santini deserves the shot. It has an authentic core of family drama and humor that could stir a large public. [03 Oct 1980, p.C1]

Carlino's direction doesn't help: he was responsible for the atrocious Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, and The Great Santini suffers from the same triteness, with its Deep South setting and a 'progressive' racial subplot that plunges deep into tear-jerk territory. See it for the acting; wallow in the sentiment.

It takes place in the TV land of predictability -- that plain of dowdy realism where a boy finds his manhood by developing the courage to stick to his principles and stand up to his father.

Overcalculated, thoroughly false humanist mush—one of those “real movies about real people” without a single authentic moment.