Reviews

• The movie was mostly shot on two difficult locations: The streets of East L.A., and inside Folsom Prison. It knows these worlds. The language, the clothes, the attitudes, are all shown with the understated conviction of a director who is sure of his material.

  Roger Ebert - The Chicago Sun-Times
  
  29 November 2012

• In American Me, Edward James Olmos has achieved several important goals, but one outweighs the rest: he has made a film that will scare the hell out of any inner-city youth not already lost to the hopelessness of gangs, drugs and prison.

  Kirk Honeycutt - The Hollywood Reporter
  
  29 November 2012

• American Me is crafted with heart and conviction and intelligence. It demands no less of its audience. It insists that there are no quick fixes, but that solutions are of the utmost urgency. It demonstrates how the capacity for change resides within each individual.

  Marjorie Baumgarten - Austin Chronicle
  
  29 November 2012

• Olmos is unsparing in depicting the dark side of human behavior. His in-your-face style stresses the urgency of a situation most of us choose to ignore. Though powerful, the film is sometimes preachy; there's a sense that information is being disseminated instead of dramatized. But it's hard to believe anyone will remain unmoved by American Me or its final shattering image of human desolation.

  Peter Travers - Rolling Stone
  
  29 November 2012

• The criminal life is portrayed with all the glamour of a mugshot in American Me, a powerful indictment of the cycle of violence bred by the prisons and street culture.

  - Variety
  
  29 November 2012