| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
There's scarcely a scene in which the actors, action and sound track aren't cranked up to maximum intensity.
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
The film's cumulative effect is as exhausting as it is exciting.
|
| 75 |
Miami Herald
If this rousing, technically dazzling movie doesn't get you going, then you probably didn't like football to being with.
|
| 75 |
USA Today
Though there are helmets deeper than this movie, you do have to admire the level of screen showmanship .
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
A turbocharged and pungently enjoyable take on the sport so many observers see - Stone, of course, included - as a reflection of the darker side of American life.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Features convincing, often soaring, performances by a savvy cast that must have gotten adrenaline shots administered by Stone himself.
|
| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
A kinetically charged gridiron drama that is enormous fun to watch.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
The characters are hardly original...but Stone puts them into play with his usual fever-pitch gusto, producing what's probably the most heart-pounding gridiron movie ever made.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
It's a close call here. I guess I recommend the movie because the dramatic scenes are worth it. But if some studio executive came along and made Stone cut his movie down to two hours, I have the strangest feeling it wouldn't lose much of substance and might even play better.
|
| 70 |
Film.com
Big, bold, brash and occasionally brilliant.
|
| 70 |
LA Weekly
The director has created a slick, newer-than-new, faster-than-fast entertainment to end all entertainments.
|
| 70 |
Variety
(Stone's) most accessible and purely enjoyable film in years.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
Stone handles his huge ensemble cast extremely well.
|
| 70 |
Film.com
The kind of minor work that may very well speak greater volumes about (Stone's) thoughts and feelings right now than another masterpiece would.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
Far too long, but its rambunctiousness is engaging, propelled by Stone's virtuosic quick-cutting.
|
| 63 |
New York Post
A testosterone- and cliché-fueled epic that will have some hoping for sudden death as it stumbles toward the three-hour mark.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
While the football sequences are carefully constructed, the sensation we get from the blizzard of images and teeth-jarring sound effects is of having our head used as the football.
|
| 60 |
Newsweek
Stone creates such a sizzling, raunchy, vital world that the cliches almost seem new.
|
| 58 |
Portland Oregonian
Though intermittently entertaining, it's too long and rarely insightful in new or meaningful ways.
|
| 50 |
Salon.com
Stone is an undeniably stylish director, and his talent for conveying intense emotion is well put to use here. But more often Stone's in-your-face technique is as exhausting as his steroid-enhanced players.
|
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
This energetic and diverting sports soap opera throws a few head fakes in the direction of an iconoclastic examination of the dark side of professional football.
|
| 50 |
Time
Ends up less than the sum of its many, often interesting parts.
|
| 50 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
As always with Stone, the film has some gritty performances and a certain likable audacity.
|
| 45 |
Mr. Showbiz
Crammed with interesting ideas, visuals, and people, but Stone buries it all in a s--tstorm of technique.
|
| 30 |
Austin Chronicle
Just watching the trailer for Oliver Stone's new football epic a few weeks back left me with a grating headache; watching the whole sweaty film practically put me in the ICU.
|
| 30 |
TNT RoughCut
Oliver Stone must learn that edgy photography does not substitute for a story with substance.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
Like a visual concussion.
|
| 30 |
Washington Post
It's about as deep as electronic white noise.
|
| 30 |
The New York Times
For much of the movie, the kinetic furor of the game sequences helps camouflage the weaknesses of a screenplay that is a mechanically contrived series of power struggles.
|
| 30 |
Chicago Reader
By the time the manic camera slows down to reveal the back stories of the characters, everyone's motives are either moot or redundant.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Examiner
A football epic on performance enhancers that may be more flagrantly flawed, more shockingly predictable and just plain cornier than its rickety predecessors.
|
| 10 |
Dallas Observer
A football film made by a man who apparently has seen little of the game outside of movies, and not very good ones at that.
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