SOURCE: “The Great White (North) Hope,” in Los Angeles Times, November 23, 1997, pp. 8, 94–95.

In the following review, Turner argues that Egoyan's past works inform The Sweet Hereafter and notes ways in which the film deviates from his earlier works.

The taxi pulls into a narrow lane in downtown Toronto's western fringes, where artists' lofts share the neighborhood with storefront restaurants and converted warehouses.

On the north side of the street, a red-brick, Victorian-era duplex unmarked by any sign houses the headquarters of Atom Egoyan, at 37 an icon of the Canadian cinema and a writer-director edging toward the center of the Hollywood radar screen.

The interior gives off a dormitory feel, with film posters covering the walls, cardboard file boxes stacked on the floor, old props leaning against walls, and doors flapping with the passage of young and youngish employees. The atmosphere had been described perfectly a few weeks earlier...