Metacritic Film

Twilight: Los Angeles

Starring Anna Deavere Smith

MPAA RATING: Not rated

Offline Releasing
Drama
76 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters September 22, 2000

The film adaptation of Anna Deavere Smith's acclaimed play, Twilight: Los Angeles presents Smith's one-woman/multi-voiced portrait of the violent aftermath in Los Angeles triggered by the acquittal in 1992 of four police officers in the beating of Rodney King. (Offline Releasing)

WRITTEN BY
Anna Deveare Smith

DIRECTED BY
Marc Levin

Overall Metascore

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

62 / 100

Critic Reviews

75 New York Daily News
Forces the audience to rethink the riots in new and difficult ways, to find empathy and revulsion where it might not have known they existed.
70 Village Voice
Smith's work is a means of cauterizing wounds that have not even begun to heal...certainly not across a continent in Giuliani's New York.
70 TV Guide
Part documentary, part one-woman quick-change show and part sociological investigation, this is enthralling theater with a purpose.
63 New York Post
When it was first performed in theaters a couple of years after the L.A. riots took place, Twilight: Los Angeles must have been very powerful. Unfortunately, director Mark Levin's filmed version lacks that impact.
60 The New York Times
The resulting compromise does not produce a perfect film, but it is a fine record of a classic production and an important reminder of an event that has not stopped echoing in American culture.
50 Variety
The camera's closer scrutiny doesn't flatter this unique theatrical reportage.

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