Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Best / Worst of the Decade

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

67 3 Idiots
47 44 Inch Chest
82 Ajami
71 American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
73 Amreeka
75 Art of the Steal, The
43 Barefoot to Timbuktu
19 Bitch Slap
49 Blood Done Sign My Name
24 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
76 Broken Embraces
52 Celine: Through the Eyes of the World
67 Children of Invention
65 City Island
64 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
84 Cove, The
83 Crazy Heart
21 Crazy on the Outside
51 Creation
xx Daddy Long Legs
81 Damned United, The
57 Defendor
61 Delta
68 Departures
64 District 13: Ultimatum
72 Easier with Practice
85 Education, An
61 Exploding Girl, The
70 Eyes Wide Open
24 Falling Awake
81 Fish Tank
56 For My Father
52 Formosa Betrayed
xx From Mexico with Love
43 Frozen
xx Ghost Town
77 Ghost Writer, The
69 Girl on the Train, The
73 Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The
47 Good Guy, The
78 Greenberg
35 Happy Tears
68 Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess
20 Harlem Aria
xx Killing Jar, The
52 Killing Kasztner
xx Kimjongilia
41 Last New Yorker, The
76 Last Station, The
47 Little Traitor, The
51 Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, The
71 Lourdes
73 Me and Orson Welles
77 Messenger, The
80 Mid-August Lunch
57 Missing Person, The
76 Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
79 Mother
50 My Name is Khan
88 Neil Young Trunk Show
49 Nine
67 North Face
64 October Country
67 Off and Running
52 Paranoids, The
40 Phyllis and Harold
49 Pop Star on Ice
49 Private Lives of Pippa Lee, The
74 Prodigal Sons
xx Promised Lands (Re-release)
89 Prophet, A
76 Red Riding Trilogy, The
63 Runaways, The
32 Saint John of Las Vegas
83 Secret of Kells, The
69 September Issue, The
36 Serious Moonlight
57 Severe Clear
63 Shinjuku Incident, The
xx Shutterbug
77 Single Man, A
76 Still Bill
34 Stolen
xx Suicide Girls Must Die!
52 Tales from the Script
74 Terribly Happy
74 That Evening Sun
47 To Die for Tano
19 To Save a Life
63 Toe to Toe
69 Town Called Panic, A
54 Until the Light Takes Us
60 Videocracy
84 Vincere
66 Waiting for Armageddon
45 White on Rice
82 White Ribbon
xx White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights, The
43 Women in Trouble
xx Word is Out
64 Yellow Handkerchief, The
64 Young Victoria, The

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Waist Deep

EMAILPRINTRogue Pictures

Waist Deep reviews
37
7.7 User Score:

Generally unfavorable reviews

Based on 22 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 11 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Action  |  Crime  |  Drama  |  Suspense/Thriller

Written by: Vondie Curtis-Hall
Darin Scott
Michael Mahern (story)

Directed by: Vondie Curtis-Hall

Release Date:
Theatrical: June 23, 2006
DVD: October 10, 2006

Running Time: 97 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: R for strong violence and pervasive language

Starring Tyrese Gibson, Meagan Good, Larenz Tate, The Game, Henry Hunter Hall, and Kimora Lee

In the urban action thriller Waist Deep, director Vondie Curtis Hall takes audiences on a ride through contemporary Los Angeles -- where a sexy 21st-century Bonnie and Clyde hit the streets. (Rogue Pictures)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

75

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Sometimes excessiveness and implausibility are virtues in disguise. Movies this enjoyable don't come about by accident.

Read Full Review >
75

Entertainment Weekly Gregory Kirschling

Curtis Hall keeps slipping in surprising social and emotional flavorings rarely found in the genre.

Read Full Review >
70

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Director Vondie Curtis Hall gives this virtually nonstop crime actioner, set against the mean streets of Los Angeles, pleasing noirish touches along with larger-than-life-size characters.

Read Full Review >
63

Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves

The performances are pretty good--with the exception of the nauseatingly sweet H. Hunter Hall (the son of the director) as Junior and a one-note scowl from rapper The Game, who plays Meat--and the screenplay, by Hall and Darin Scott, has some genuinely funny moments.

Read Full Review >
60

Variety Justin Chang

Waist Deep packs considerable energy and style into its tale of an ex-con forced back into a life of crime to rescue his kidnapped son. Yet the kinetic direction and occasional sly humor can't disguise the tale's banal brutality or pump much excitement into its routinized pileup of shoot-outs and car chases.

Read Full Review >
60

Washington Post Teresa Wiltz

No, it's not a great movie. It is, however, an interesting one.

Read Full Review >
58

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

By most of the ways movies are usually judged, pretty much of a mess. The camerawork is jerky and distracting, the dialogue is cliched and the story makes so little sense that the script seems to have been improvised by the actors as they went along.

Read Full Review >
50

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Billed as an action thriller, it plays out as an urban-fairy tale version of "Bonnie and Clyde," with an ending suitable for a Harlequin romance.

Read Full Review >
50

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

Gibson and Good deliver such emotionally honest performances that we wish them a happy ending, no matter how many movie clichés have to be trotted out to get there.

Read Full Review >
50

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Unapologetically a B movie, its narrative premise whittled down to a mean little nub and placed carefully on the borderline between the wildly implausible and the completely absurd.

Read Full Review >
50

Los Angeles Times Gene Seymour

As its plot thickens, Waist Deep gets more outlandish. The whole mess empties out into an overextended car chase through Los Angeles.

Read Full Review >
50

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Waist Deep is a cynical excuse for the writer and director (and talented actor) Vondie Curtis-Hall to sock some money away for the kids' college tuition. It's as if he watched "Get Rich or Die Tryin' " and thought, "It needs more palm trees."

Read Full Review >
38

Miami Herald Peter Debruge

With an exciting way out, the audience would have gladly overlooked all the loose ends from earlier in the movie. But the way Hall plays it, he undermines the early style and intelligence of his all-black action movie, taking audiences for the wrong kind of ride in the end.

Read Full Review >
38

TV Guide Ken Fox

A deep waste is more like it.

Read Full Review >
30

Village Voice Bill Gallo

For its ever shifting attitudes toward men, women, and murder, Waist Deep is one of the sloppiest movies ever to reach the screen.

Read Full Review >
30

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

The lengths to which a parent will go to save a child can be gut-wrenching stuff, but Waist Deep rarely hits you in the pit of your stomach. Blame it on the lame screenplay, which unwisely (and badly) gravitates more toward the crime-spree elements of "Bonnie and Clyde" than the fierce parental instincts of, say, "Kramer vs. Kramer" or "Lorenzo's Oil."

Read Full Review >
25

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Like the forgotten blaxploitation schlock it often resembles, the film aspires to nothing but cheap thrills, but while it's plenty cheap, it's far from thrilling.

Read Full Review >
25

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The cast, especially The Game, does a fairly good job with this meager material, but it's like trying to make chateaubriand out of Spam.

Read Full Review >
25

Premiere Monica A. Reyhani

To be fair Deep does have one thing going for it. While the movie never seems to end, and when it does… oh man. Think "Aquaman" meets "Training Day." It proves that sometimes a crappy drama is sometimes just a comedy in disguise.

Read Full Review >
25

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Slow-witted and occasionally unintentionally hilarious.

Read Full Review >
0

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

It's about as much fun for the viewer as being dropped into a virtual-reality version of a highway-safety crash film. Hall writes and directs with the finesse of a rusty hatchet.

Read Full Review >
0

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Director Vondie Curtis-Hall has managed to top (or should I say "bottom"?) his last theatrical release, Mariah Carey's "Glitter," with a movie that offers not one praiseworthy moment: not a scene, not a performance, not a technical achievement, not even a line of dialogue.

Read Full Review >

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 11 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Theresa B. gave it a10:
I really enjoy this film. Tyrese and Megan Good gave a good performance and the action kept me interested throughout the movie.

Princess Young gave it a10:
I think this was the best movie I seen in a long time. I had to go by it on DVD.

Lee R. gave it a7:
Curtis Hall surprised me with this one. In a time when recycled crap like Little Miss Sunshine and Garden State are ruling the world of film, it's refreshing to walk into something like Waist Deep and be reminded of just how good films used to be.

Kourtney T. gave it an8:
Waist Deep is definitely one of the best films of the summer. It had all the elements that a movie should have. Meagan Good gave an outstanding performance as a lead actress. I definitely recommend this movie as a must see hit!

Abraham W. gave it an8:
i thoroughly enjoyed the film....the pacing was excellent as was the acting of the two leads ....it kept me on the edge of my seat.

Popular on CBS sites: College Signing Day | March Madness | TV | iPhone | Cell Phones | Video Game Reviews | Free Music

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2010 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy (UPDATED) | Terms of Use