Critics reviews

Peck’s proselytising point of view could easily fall into bombast. The films’ often contemplative pace militates against this, though, as does Alexei Aigui’s score. It complements the ‘crude’ epic reach with subtlety and economy so that, even during dramatic surges, you are never distracted from the flow of information.

["Exterminate All the Brutes"] is an essay-film, a film of ideas, that are for the most part expressed by Peck himself, in his own voice-over... It is literally a film in Peck’s voice, and that strength, and that audacity, also gives rise to its artistic peculiarities.

Peck confronts and dismantles the mythical American dream... Through a combination of archival footage, Hollywood movie clips that recall the searing work of Marlon Riggs, scripted interludes, and animated scenes, Peck batters us with devastating and harsh truths. It’s not the American story even the most liberal-minded among us wants to accept as our undeniable past.

But from a pure filmmaking perspective, "Exterminate All the Brutes "may be unparalleled among TV docuseries; the closest I can think of is the complexity and contextualization evident in the 2016 Oscar-winning 10-part series "O.J.: Made in America..." ["Exterminate All the Brutes"] brings every tool in the cinematic chest to the work table, and each is deployed skillfully.

But Peck keeps "Exterminate All the Brutes'" ambition from spiraling into aimlessness with a secret ingredient: himself. On its face, an individual projecting themselves onto world history, and vice versa, sounds borderline narcissistic... [Yet] when reflected through Peck’s biography, the melting pot of ideas in "Exterminate All the Brutes" starts to cohere into a consistent argument.

It may well be the most politically radical and intellectually challenging work of nonfiction ever made for television... Its point is not to rail against the Donald Trumps, or even the Adolf Hitlers, so much as it is to render visible the architecture of oppression that makes the rise of demagogues inevitable.

A striking piece of nonfiction work that has the intellectual rigor of an advanced history course... If you finish “Exterminate All the Brutes” without re-examining the hundreds of hours spent in history classes, then you didn’t pay attention to Peck’s lesson.

Blistering and dense, “Exterminate All the Brutes,” picks up where his “I Am Not Your Negro” left off with its unsparing deletion of accepted falsehoods... It’s a sprawling academic narrative, but it’s Peck who makes it approachable with his own passion and ambition.

[The series] succeeds at the very least in spurring contemplation not only regarding what we know about history, but how -- and who -- conveyed that to us. While Peck's unorthodox approach might not win many converts, the project's existence is, if not quite a miracle, its own kind of victory.

Rather than referencing the present moment to a fault, Peck is working on a grand scale and a sort of geologic time, measuring our history in acts of cruelty. He does so with a visual imagination and an unblinking-ness that will leave those viewers who are up for the challenge dazzled and, perhaps, changed.

["Exterminate All the Brutes"] constantly makes connections, but it feels more didactic than complex, more academic than allusive... Throughout [it,] the specific drifts into the general and the historical into the personal without, perhaps, the effect that Peck is hoping for... If there is something we possess that could have made history different, either he doesn’t know or he’s not telling.

Exterminate All the Brutes is a daring, imaginative and defiantly challenging artwork — one that often feels like it belongs as much in a museum as on a TV or laptop. That kind of ambition almost guarantees some minor missteps... But as this introspective yet cosmopolitan cri de cœur demonstrates, Peck is an ideal guide to help us confront the truths we’ve yet to fully grapple with.