Roy Martin RR’s review published on Letterboxd:
Hunger is a disgustingly tough watch. It is brutal, claustrophobic, cruel, brutal, powerful, shivering and did I say brutal? You can feel the pain, the hatred and the sadness that these prisoners are feeling.
The acting is just phenomenal, especially from Michael Fassbender.. Oh my god, what an actor. You really believe that he is on a hunger strike, he looked like Christian Bale from The Machinist, but worse. There's a 17-18 minute long take with him and the priest talking, no cuts, no changing of camera angle, how on earth did he remember all that and still looked so convincing?
This was Steve McQueen's directorial debut of a feature length film. What a masterful movie to begin with, eh? Powerful, beautiful and dark filmmaking, all at ones. The long shots may feel a tad pretentious at times, but it's still so interesting and sobering to look at.
There's no use of soundtracks or a score in this movie, it makes you feel by what you watch and hearing the screams, the pain and the hitting. The movie was just so real, no use of stylized cinematography either.
With all this positive writing I still can't give it full score, there was just something missing, I don't know what, but just a feeling. A magnificent movie that's really hard to watch.