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80Duke is a superb director of actors, and, as in "Deep Cover", Fishburne manages to suggest a lot with a deft economy of means.
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75Duke and his screenwriter, Chris Brancato, don't make Hoodlum into a violent action film, though it has its bloody shoot-outs, but into more of a character study.
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75It is familiarly old-fashioned, complete with montages of newspaper clippings fluttering past and calendar days slipping by. The sets, costumes, old cars and general atmosphere all beautifully recall moviemaking of a bygone era. And for that, hats off to Duke.
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75The Sting-like ending with its crosses and double-crosses could have been better handled, but there are plenty of other payoffs in Hoodlum. [27Aug1995 Pg02.D]
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75While Chris Brancato's script doesn't reveal anything new or surprising (students of history and fans of "The Cotton Club" already know how this film ends), it's a competent piece of storytelling that incorporates elements of human interest with the threat of escalating violence.
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75The director, Bill Duke ("A Rage in Harlem"), stages all of this with proficient confidence, yet he never truly summons the operatic power of the genre -- the pulp tragedy of ambition built on (and drowned in) blood.
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70Too long by about 20 minutes, the film drags a bit, but the acting--fine throughout--carries the whole thing.
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70Director Bill Duke renders the period saga with passion, but lacks the sort of fluid, organic style the material requires; the film falls short of its aim for mythic proportion. Still, there's a vibrancy that's engrossing, if uneven.
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63Duke rarely operates at more than a TV movie-of-the-week level of originality, but Hoodlum is still an easy movie to enjoy.
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60You can feel Hoodlum hungering to be bigger than it possibly can be. It wants to be "The Godfather" of African Americans, a vast tale of crime and heroism and nerve and ambition. But it tries too hard and ends up feeling spotty rather than deep. [27Aug1997 Pg D.01]
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50Laurence Fishburne and Tim Roth play the main characters with conviction, but Bill Duke's punchy filmmaking style banishes any hope of storytelling subtlety or psychological nuance.
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50And while Mr. Duke's direction has visual panache, the movie is unevenly paced.
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40Uneven and inaccurate as it may be, it's hard to wash out entirely with a movie that explores as neglected an aspect of classic gangster mythology as this one; at the same time, you can't help but wish it did so more successfully.
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40At the very least, Hoodlum might have been better off had it been filmed in monochromatic black-and-white instead of the garish color palette (and plenty of gore) that Duke opted for because they, unfortunately, only reinforce the hamminess of the picture.
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30Laurence Fishburne is one actor who has charisma to burn, but even his incendiary performance can't ignite Hoodlum, a would-be gangster epic that generates less heat than a nickel cigar. [27Aug1997 Pg 8]
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25Hoodlum is an overlong gangster movie, a bloated and often laughable attempt at an epic.
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10A conclusion featuring a dizzying string of betrayals that leads to a confusing anti-climax robs the film of even cheap action thrills, making Hoodlum an almost thoroughly forgettable experience, albeit probably the only film in history to unite Queen Latifah and The Mod Squad's Clarence Williams III.
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