Metacritic Film

Shade

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Melanie Griffith, Gabriel Byrne, Hal Holbrook, Thandie Newton, Stuart Townsend, Dina Merrill, Bo Hopkins, and Jamie Foxx

MPAA RATING: R for language, violence and sexuality/nudity

Dimension Films / RKO Pictures
Crime  |  Drama  |  Suspense/Thriller
101 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters April 9, 2004

The hand is quicker than the eye in LA's underground gambling scene, hustlers get hustled and fortunes ride on every deal. Three small-time grifters devise a plan to beat the ultimate card mechanic - The Dean. But a seat at The Dean's table doesn't come cheap. (RKO Pictures)

WRITTEN BY
Damian Nieman

DIRECTED BY
Damian Nieman

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

40 / 100

Critic Reviews

70 Los Angeles Times
A clever and adroit B picture with A virtues, starting with its ensemble cast.
60 The Hollywood Reporter
A dramatic thriller with a large cast playing the hell out of some very juicy roles. Nieman's script shuffles nimbly among an array of colorful characters and offers unexpected twists that keep you off-balance.
50 Variety
In the end, under-realized direction and characters deliver less than a full deck.
40 LA Weekly
The flashes of warm, human talent that pulse periodically from the ensemble -- Byrne and Foxx, particularly -- only make their presence in this terrifically bad movie all the more baffling.
25 Miami Herald
A failure on every conceivable level -- from its trite, pedestrian dialogue to its static, torturous pacing.

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