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100Cold and cut to the bone, the film is a primer in screen virtuosity. Standard action film clichés, like a face getting hit with a chair, get turned inside out; both film and actors somehow manage to seem realistic and stylized at the same time. [21 Sept 1990, Life, p.6D]
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100A masterpiece, but of a unique kind... A gorgeously filmed, supremely well-acted, intricately written film noir about now.
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100Barry Sonnenfeld's stunning cinematography and the sharply etched characterizations make this film one for the ages.
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100Substance is here in spades, along with the twisted, brilliantly controlled style on which filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen made a name.
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100As disturbing and densely beautiful as its opening image, a lofty forest that dwarfs the gangsters as they laugh over their kill.
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88The movie is artful to a fault, with too many characters sitting in perfectly arranged, immaculately lighted rooms and talking a lot. It contains near-classic sequences, though, and splendid performances. [28 Sept 1990]
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If, however, you're looking for compelling characters, all the lights are blazing here but nobody's at home.
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80A very clever, stylish story of friendship, loyalty and betrayal.
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80The Coens are artists too, and their cool dazzler is an elegy to a day when Hollywood could locate moral gravity in a genre film for grownups. [24 Sept 1990, p.83]
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80Crossing should be watched not because it's their finest achievement (that's still to come), but because the brothers are keeping things refreshingly different and building a career, their minds still very much fixed on originality.
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75What it doesn't have is a narrative magnet to pull us through - a story line that makes us really care what happens, aside from the elegant but mechanical manipulations of the plot.
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75The Coens have technique and they have taste; what they do not yet have is the ability to move beyond their handsome imagery to the human center of their material. [5 Oct 1990, Friday, p.C]
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70It takes place in an artificial world constructed largely from the mythology of other movies, and, though it's both seamless and stylish, some find it a little too self-conscious for its own good.
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60Heart may be what the movie needs most, but a bit of clarity wouldn't hurt either. Even here in gangsterland, where random characters are cherished and non sequiturs are considered wisecracks, there is a difference between complications and impenetrability, and this plot is a bloody thicket.. [5 Oct 1990, Calendar, p.F-10]
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50An elegant-looking picture, carefully made and beautifully put together, but when the gloss wears off, you're left with an experience that doesn’t quite satisfy. [5 Oct 1990, Daily Datebook, E10]
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40The double crosses are so intricate and the cynicism so enveloping that it becomes increasingly difficult to care about the characters
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30Weightless. It is also, unfortunately, without much point at all... A movie of random effects and little accumulative impact.
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0A lifeless, tedious picture... A complete dud. [29 Oct 1990, p.26]
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 18 out of 22
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Mixed: 3 out of 22
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Negative: 1 out of 22
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