- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
80Turns potentially forgettable formula into something strangely diverting.
-
75Bullock does a good job here of working against her natural likability, creating a character you'd like to like, and could like, if she weren't so sad, strange and turned in upon herself.
-
75The outline of Murder by Numbers may be familiar, but the filmmakers and Bullock do an expert job of filling in the colors.
-
75The result is two or three cuts above genre standard.
-
75The story may be about cold-blooded murder, but Bullock's pulsating performance is about the getting of wisdom.
-
75Schroeder's misstep is trying hard to please his star, whether it be her character's empathetic past or one very fake-looking action climax. His greatest service is keeping her toe-to-toe with her talented co-stars -- and both are the better for it.
-
70Even as the psychological interdependencies of the two boys take the foreground, the movie gets more and more crowded with fun-house surprises and cliffhanging set pieces.
-
70Though Schroeder makes you squirm more than you want to at the inevitable scenes of the trussed-up female murder victim, he also has the proclivity and the skill to make at least the B-picture half of Murder by Numbers of more than passing interest.
-
70Bullock shades what she normally does into something more interesting -- the angriest and sexiest work she's done. [6 May 2002, p. 138]
-
63In effect gives you two movies for the price of one. The better one doesn't star Sandra Bullock.
-
63When Bullock is on screen, Murder by Numbers is as far away as a sleepwalker's gaze. But when Schroeder focuses on the teenagers, the film is wide awake, eye-to-eye with adolescent angst and anomie.
-
63For much of its length, the film is plausible, if predictable and ponderous. Its strongest assets are its actors.
-
63Towards the end, Murder By Numbers reverts to form with cheesy clichés, plot twists, and a fair amount of unnecessary action, but that's easily the film's low point.
-
63This is the kind of film where the audience has to sort through the sequences, like visiting the green grocer's: liked that bit, can do without those.
-
60Engrossing but psychologically shallow tale.
-
Isn't a great movie, but it's a perfectly acceptable widget.
-
58Even though Bullock engages in a climactic scene of blue-screen peril, she essentially cedes the match to the kids. In this mediocre murder case, their presence is the only thing that's really killer.
-
50In Murder by Numbers, though, even Schroeder can't keep his own boredom from showing.
-
50Ultimately, Murder by Numbers has been reduced to a tease, giving us a hint -- mostly through the fine performances of Gosling, who creates a charismatic sociopath, and Pitt, who's character seems genuinely troubled -- of the kind of relevant social drama it might have been.
-
50A near miss, a respectable but uninspired thriller that's intelligent and considered in its details, but ultimately weak in its impact.
-
50There is indeed a murder - two of them, in fact - and the movie proceeds strictly by the numbers laid down long ago in some by-the-book Hollywood writing class.
-
50Doesn't necessarily make Murder by Numbers an awful film; it's certainly watchable, but it never escapes its paint-by-numbers design.
-
50But owing no doubt to the requirements of Sandra Bullock, the movie's above-the-line star, executive producer, and worst enemy, this potboiling procedural never stands a chance of disproving its title.
-
50The real surprise, given the secondhand material, is that not everything proceeds by rote in Murder by Numbers.
-
50Not even the actress' soulfulness can save the generic climax, in which she tussles with the badder bad guy on a collapsing terrace above a crashing surf. As a colleague muttered, "Murder by numbers is right."
-
50Neither the crime nor its detection is especially interesting, and screenwriter Tony Gayton doesn't appear to be aiming for psychological insights.
-
42Starts out dark, thrilling and inventive, then, regrettably, becomes sappy, mainstream and mundane.
-
40There's nothing blatantly wrong with it (except perhaps the red-assed baboon ex machina), but it's 100% shock-free and coasts to a formulaic conclusion.
-
40Director Barbet Schroeder is too elegant an artist for this material, which veers between routine cop-movie conventions and high-toned malarkey that seems a lot closer to Dungeons & Dragons than to "Thus Spoke Zarathustra."
-
40A sappy big-screen version of TV's "CSI."
-
40A moralizing thriller so listless that it plays out like a game of mouse and mouse.
-
40The shallow-seated problem with Murder by Numbers is that it's serious and doggedly intricate but not much fun.
-
30In context, it's utterly, dismayingly typical.
-
30Most obvious crime is first-degree dullness, giving us a thriller without thrills and a mystery devoid of urgent questions.
-
20This premise could, just maybe, make for a decent thriller, but everything about Murder by Numbers is so flavorless and rote, so devoid of real suspense and human interest, that you never suspect for a moment that the answers are likely to be engaging.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 5 out of 8
-
Mixed: 1 out of 8
-
Negative: 2 out of 8
-
5
-
GaborA.2