| 92 |
Mr. Showbiz
I've not stopped thinking about it -- weighing might-have-beens and alternative courses of action, as though remembering an actual event rather than a nimble, superbly-realized fantasy. That's a first-rate achievement.
|
| 88 |
Charlotte Observer
A taut, consistently surprising political thriller with a sting in its tail.
|
| 88 |
New York Post
A triumph of low-budget filmmaking.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The kind of movie that leaves you with fundamental objections. But that's after it's over. While it's playing, it's surprisingly good.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
Robert Dominguez
A taut and thought-provoking thriller .
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
One of the pleasures of Deterrence is that it does not tell the audience what to think.
|
| 75 |
Boston Globe
Jim Sullivan
There is a palpable edge-of-the-seat tension and a number of complex ethnic issues that linger after the movie ends.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
A surprisingly gripping experience.
|
| 63 |
Baltimore Sun
A carefully conceived and earnest movie that announces its many points just a bit too carefully and earnestly.
|
| 60 |
Los Angeles Times
Lurie undermines his high-wire act with the melodramatic carryings-on of the diner patrons.
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
Foreigners who argue that Americans are Neanderthal savages can point to this movie as persuasive evidence.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
A tense geopolitical thriller that leaves a curiously bad aftertaste.
|
| 50 |
LA Weekly
Steven Mikulan
Ultimately this is a radio drama made into a movie with a single set.
|
| 50 |
The New York Times
Probably serves some useful purpose, despite its ham-fisted preachiness and mediocre acting.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
There's nothing super about the movie, aside from a loopiness that affords it a certain guilty-pleasure cachet.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
The setting is cramped and the story is illogical, but it's suspenseful as long as you don't think about it very hard.
|
| 50 |
Village Voice
Begins and ends with footage of FDR intoning "I hate war," something the film takes two interminable hours to say.
|
| 40 |
Film.com
Steadfastly conventional.
|
| 33 |
Portland Oregonian
A new political thriller, has an ending so egregiously stupid that not to reveal it would be a disservice to moviegoers.
|
| 25 |
Entertainment Weekly
Steve Daly
The plot twists fall about as weightily as the fake snow.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Examiner
Ludicrously written and appallingly directed by ex-film critic Rod Lurie, seems to pride itself on the fact that it never (ever) leaves the greasy-spoon milieu in which the president and his staff are trapped by heavy snowfall.
|
| 25 |
Chicago Tribune
To say this movie's premise is bonkers is putting it mildly.
|
| 20 |
Austin Chronicle
Well-intentioned but hardly well-executed.
|
| 10 |
Dallas Observer
In short, let nothing deter you from staying home.
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