Primal Fear

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack

Riveting.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The plot is as good as crime procedurals get, but the movie is really better than its plot because of the three-dimensional characters.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

A crackling courtroom drama with more twists than O.J. had alibis.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A tight courtroom melodrama that serves up twist after twist like so many baffling knuckle balls, this film handles its suspenseful material with skill and style.

USA Today Mike Clark

As a forum for its actors and for the big-screen directorial debut of multi-Emmy winner Gregory Hoblit, the film is up to the job.

San Francisco Examiner Barbara Shulgasser

This is the sort of movie that doesn't become irritating even when it's predictable.

Entertainment Weekly Ken Tucker

Gere taps into his charismatic-weasel mode, but director Gregory Hoblit fills the big screen with excellent TV actors (Andre Braugher, John Mahoney, Maura Tierney) and then gives them nothing interesting to do.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Despite high production standards and a slick advertising campaign, Primal Fear is as trite and routine as any made-for-TV courtroom drama.

Variety Todd McCarthy

The major jolt is saved for the very end but, like much else in the film, it is overexplained and underlined when more simplicity and quiet would have provided the revelation with the power of a depth charge.

Austin Chronicle Alison Macor

Norton's performance and the well-paced tension preceding the movie's climactic sequence provide an entertaining if slightly predictable thriller.

TV Guide Staff (Non Credited)

The sky-high sleaze quotient -- lascivious priests, amateur porn movies, teenage hustlers and institutionalized corruption of every kind -- ought to guarantee fun for all, but heavy messages keep poking through and spoiling everything.

Time Richard Schickel

Diverting without being fully absorbing, this is a film best appreciated as an exercise in--shall we say it?--Primal Gere. [15 Apr 1996, p.100]

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Semiabsorbing.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

Pared down to a farfetched plot and paper-thin motives, the story relies on an overload of tangential subplots to keep it looking busy. [3 Apr 1996, p.C15]

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The special twist-which Paramount Pictures has implored critics not to divulge-redefines the story completely. It also ruins everything.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The violent story is long on nastiness, short on credibility.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

You'd get more of a jolt from Angela Lansbury on "Murder, She Wrote" and more intellectual stimulation from a cozy game of Clue.

Salon.com Andrew Ross

It should have been sent straight to video. As a courtroom drama, it stumbles from one ludicrous howler to another. Were the movie's "legal technical advisers" on another planet while the rest of the world was learning about legal procedure courtesy of the O.J. trial?