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100The pleasure of this unique film comes in watching superb actors dine on Mamet's pungent language like the feast it is.
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100The movie version, directed with unobtrusive precision by James Foley, stays amazingly true to the play's feisty spirit.
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100The reason the film prompts laughter, and finally elation, is not because it's jolly or has any feel-good words to live by. It's because of the utterly demonic skill with which these foulmouthed characters carve one another up in futile attempts to stave off disaster.
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100All-expert cast.
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90Gets most of its legs from the acting and the dialogue, which has such a rhythmic grace that scenes from the movie can be played and replayed with no loss of thump.
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88Mamet's dialogue has a kind of logic, a cadence, that allows people to arrive in triumph at the ends of sentences we could not possibly have imagined. There is great energy in it. You can see the joy with which these actors get their teeth into these great lines.
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80A searing showcase for a remarkable ensemble cast.
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80All the performances are exceptional.
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It's blackly comic - though the humour creeps up on you slowly, and you're seldom sure if you should really be laughing.
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70The directing's a bit obtrusive, but the script and the acting gets to the heart of Mamet's glorious obsession with macho B.S.
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70But it doesn't quite all come together here as it did onstage, and relentless scabrousness, heavy claustrophobia and a vaguely dated feel are among the elements that will keep mainstream audiences away.
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60There is no evidence of life outside the immediate world of the movie.
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Hammers away at the plot so relentlessly that you can feel the nails entering the back of your skull.
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Interesting to watch like well-performed gymnastics but it never really connects.
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Positive: 8 out of 8
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Mixed: 0 out of 8
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Negative: 0 out of 8
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StevenM10
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10