A three-paneled look at the worldwide AIDS crisis: in Montreal, a porn actor schemes to pass his mandatory blood test; a young nun makes a personal sacrifice for the benefit of a South African village; in rural China, a black market operative posing as a government-sanctioned blood drawer jeopardizes an entire village's safety
It's hard to know what exactly the movie means with a lot of the choices it makes, even if, ultimately, it means well.
– Wesley Morris,
Boston Globe,
1 Dec 2006
rotten:
Broad in scope and at times visually stunning, [director Thom] Fitzgerald's project is ambitious but lacks cohesion.
– Teresa Budasi,
Chicago Sun-Times,
1 Dec 2006
rotten:
Only the African story feels complete, while the Chinese story is gloomily hopeless and the Montreal story is just a bad idea. 3 Needles is not about AIDS; it's about the exploitation of it.
– Jack Mathews,
New York Daily News,
1 Dec 2006
fresh:
If nothing else, [director Thom] Fitzgerald has demonstrated how huge a challenge the AIDS epidemic is on a worldwide scale, and how it will take a concerted, intelligent effort to solve it. It'll take a lot more than throwing money around.
– G. Allen Johnson,
San Francisco Chronicle,
1 Dec 2006
rotten:
The situations are contrived, the ironies are cheap, and the dialogue is overly blunt.