| 50 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
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.
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| 50 |
Film Threat
Heather Wadowski
With a couple of plot twists and a few powerful performances, Deuces Wild is worth checking out -- but only on home video.
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| 40 |
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Director Scott Kalvert returns to wring every last cliché out 1950s juvenile delinquent movies, without adding anything particularly fresh to the formula.
|
| 38 |
USA Today
Claudia Puig
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.
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| 38 |
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
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.
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| 33 |
Entertainment Weekly
Steve Daly
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.
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| 30 |
New Times (L.A.)
Andy Klein
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.
|
| 30 |
Chicago Reader
J. R. Jones
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.
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| 30 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Nathan Rabin
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.
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| 25 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
In its best moments, resembles a bad high school production of "Grease," without benefit of song.
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| 25 |
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Deuces Wild is the worst thing to have happened to Brooklyn since the Ice Age severed it from the mainland.
|
| 25 |
Boston Globe
Jonathan Perry
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.
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| 25 |
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
At the very least, Corman would have remembered to make the movie fun.
|
| 20 |
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
Would have been smart to fold before it let its hand go this far.
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| 20 |
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
Propelled not by characters but caricatures.
|
| 10 |
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
A film that desperately wants to be a music video circa 1983.
|
| 10 |
Variety
Robert Koehler
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.
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| 10 |
Los Angeles Times
Gene Seymour
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."
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| 10 |
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
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.
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| 0 |
LA Weekly
Manohla Dargis
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.
|
| 0 |
Village Voice
Jessica Winter
An endless chain reaction of cartilage-crunching, organ-pulping brawls.
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