Metacritic reviews

A riveting urban drama that tackles a myriad of sociopolitical issues -- conflicts of race, sex, class, marriage and politics -- without spreading itself thin.

In her (Viola Davis) umpteenth turn as a strong ghetto mother, she is the life force that lifts Matt Tauber's workaday movie The Architect into an experience to savor.

There are too many characters undergoing life changes in the story for each to be properly developed in an 82-minute movie. But for the most part, the actors get the work done.

LaPaglia and Davis deliver top-notch performances that go a long way toward offsetting the material's didacticism.

It's a compact and symmetrical picture with all its plot points in the right places, but I never found it convincing in the slightest.

Deteriorates from a potentially enlightening exploration of urban development and class conflict into a preposterous melodrama.

Still feels stagebound, inert when it needs to be cinematic.

Every character in The Architect is crazily stuccoed with crisis.

The Architect wears its heavy social consciousness like an albatross, and Tauber's plodding, earnest direction does little to wean the material away from its stage roots.

Though nothing much happens, all of the actors get to do lots of teary close-ups.