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Deuces Wild
Metascore
16 out of 100

Overwhelming dislike - based on 21 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 21
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 21
  3. Negative: 18 out of 21
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  1. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    50
    Brainless, but enjoyably over-the-top, the retro gang melodrama, Deuces Wild represents fifties teen-gang machismo in a way that borders on rough-trade homo-eroticism.
  2. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Heather Wadowski
    50
    With a couple of plot twists and a few powerful performances, Deuces Wild is worth checking out -- but only on home video.
  3. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    40
    Director Scott Kalvert returns to wring every last cliché out 1950s juvenile delinquent movies, without adding anything particularly fresh to the formula.
  4. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    38
    Sort of "West Side Story" set in 1958 Brooklyn -- minus the music or competent storytelling -- is clearly not dealing from anything close to a full deck.
  5. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    38
    It would appear that director Scott Kalvert never met a cliché he didn't like. No telegraphing is too obvious or simplistic for this movie.
    All this critic's reviews
  6. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Steve Daly
    33
    If you put the scripts for ''West Side Story,'' ''Mean Streets,'' and ''The Warriors'' in a blender, you might wind up with something like Deuces Wild, a preposterously melodramatic paean to gang-member teens in Brooklyn circa 1958.
  7. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    30
    A repellent orgy of gratuitous violence and hackneyed melodrama, Deuces Wild marks a grim nadir for everyone involved, including late cinematographer John A. Alonzo (Chinatown, Harold & Maude), who deserved a much better swan song.
  8. New Times (L.A.)
    Reviewed by: Andy Klein
    30
    The actors labor long and hard to bring some semblance of reality to the proceedings, but the whole affair has a distinctly faux '50s feel to it.
  9. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J. R. Jones
    30
    Writer-producer Paul Kimatian was once a still photographer for Martin Scorsese, who reportedly encouraged him to write this Italian-American soap opera. Given its tired dialogue, predictable situations, and vicious street fighting, Scorsese may wish he'd kept his mouth shut.
  10. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    25
    At the very least, Corman would have remembered to make the movie fun.
  11. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    25
    Deuces Wild is the worst thing to have happened to Brooklyn since the Ice Age severed it from the mainland.
  12. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Perry
    25
    Just about the only things that remotely redeem this movie are the solid acting performances by the principals, who make the most of the one-dimensional material given them.
  13. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    25
    In its best moments, resembles a bad high school production of "Grease," without benefit of song.
  14. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    20
    Would have been smart to fold before it let its hand go this far.
  15. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    20
    Propelled not by characters but caricatures.
  16. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    10
    It's so uncomplicated you could go out for spaghetti after the first 10 minutes and slip back into your seat just in time for the last 10, and you wouldn't feel you'd missed a thing, save a rumble or two.
  17. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Gene Seymour
    10
    Skip it. Just fill in the blanks and you too can brew the same bland, goopy mixture, right down to such clunker lines as "There is a Santa Claus, Ma. He just doesn't come to Brooklyn anymore."
  18. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    10
    A film that desperately wants to be a music video circa 1983.
  19. Variety
    Reviewed by: Robert Koehler
    10
    In its overwhelmingly artificial depiction of the street gangs that ruled Brooklyn's mean streets in the 1950s, Deuces Wild draws from a phony deck.
  20. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    0
    Astonishing isn't the word -- neither is incompetent, incoherent or just plain crap. Indeed, none of these words really gets at the very special type of badness that is Deuces Wild.
  21. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Jessica Winter
    0
    An endless chain reaction of cartilage-crunching, organ-pulping brawls.
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User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
6.2 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 9 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 4
  3. Negative: 1 out of 4
  1. MattC
    10
    Critics are crazy, which is why you shouldn’t listen to them. This movie was great. Good acting, good story, very entertaining. Like west side story without the dancing and singing. So don’t listen to the critics. Because I’ve learned that most of the they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.… Full Review »
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