Metacritic reviews

As profound and intelligent as it is moving, and that makes this memorable motion picture one of 1996's best.

Intelligent, involving and serious, it is as honestly emotional as Hollywood allows itself to get, a story of the search for wartime truth whose own concern for the genuine makes all the difference.

The end of the film understandably lays on the emotion a little heavily, but until then Courage Under Fire has been a fascinating emotional and logistical puzzle--almost a courtroom movie, with the desert as the courtroom.

In Washington's haunted eyes, in the stunning cinematography of Roger Deakins (Fargo) that plunges into the mad flare of combat, in the plot that deftly turns a whodunit into a meditation on character and in Zwick's persistent questioning of authority, Courage Under Fire honors its subject and its audience.

Denzel Washington is riveting.

Despite its underlying predictability, Courage Under Fire manages warmth, intelligence and a healthy share of surprises.

A film that wins on 'Courage' of its convictions. {12 July 1996, p. D1]

While the account of Walden's heroics doesn't necessarily move from legend to fact, it does push the bounds of truth and raise interesting questions about the function of truth for the survivors of war.

Patrick Sheane Duncan's script deftly weaves together the stories of Serling and Walden, and Zwick remarkably sidesteps the trap of sticky sentiment--an idea further carried forth by Ryan's admirably against-type (and shamefully unsung) performance.

The film seems to want us to pin a medal to its own chest.