Sea of Love

With a wealth of talent at his disposal, director Becker spends too much of the film's flashier currencies-criminality and sex-and draws too little on nuance and personality. Even so, the movie winds up in the black. Read full review

Sea of Love is a tough, sexy thriller, one of the most exciting suspense movies of the year, and undoubtedly the funniest. Al Pacino and John Goodman are terrific as detectives teamed up to catch a serial killer who apparently is choosing victims from personal ads in a New York weekly. [17 Sep 1989, p.11F]

Efficient enough as a thriller, but what makes this mandatory viewing is the return of Pacino. There are isolated scenes as good as anything he's done, and if the role is less demanding than Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon or Michael in The Godfather, his presence lifts the production in the way De Niro lifted Midnight Run. Read full review

Never revealing too much, Becker keeps us intrigued to the end, whilst Pacino and Barkin unexpectedly sizzle. Read full review

Sea of Love is a suspenseful film noir boasting a superlative performance by Al Pacino as a burned-out Gotham cop. Handsome production benefits from a witty screenplay limning the bittersweet tale of a 20-year veteran NYC cop assigned to a case tracking down the serial killer of men who've made dates through the personal columns.

Sea of Love tells an ingeniously constructed story that depends for its suspense on the same question posed by Jagged Edge and Fatal Attraction: What happens when you fall in love with a person who may be quite prepared to murder you? Read full review

A thriller featuring a mysterious femme fatale, an involving plot, and some nice offbeat twists, Sea of Love owes a good deal to Hitchcock, and to such recent efforts as Fatal Attraction and Jagged Edge, though it can claim plenty of originality as well. Read full review

Although the film is full of the sensory jolts common to this genre, it also has more humor than most, thanks to Richard Rice's tough, witty script. [15 Sep 1989, p.37]

Both Pacino and Barkin are quite good playing battle-scarred veterans of mature relationships. Just like New Yorkers who lock their doors, these two characters have locked their hearts. This is Pacino's quietest and best performance since The Godfather Part Two. Credit director Harold Becker for helping to keep Pacino from spitting his way through another role. Read full review

All the actors fire off one another nicely. Goodman and Pacino may be the only cop duo in memory to generate anything like real enthusiasm. Read full review

Price and director Harold Becker build in enough jumps and scares and good red herrings to be satisfying -- there are a few especially heart pounding moments in which Keller's sense of helplessness in his own bedroom is palpable -- but a few logical holes may appear when you talk about it afterwards. Still, Sea of Love is leagues deeper than the average buddy movie. Read full review

Moment by moment, Sea of Love holds you in a tight grip. It's a stylish diversion, though it never gets much below its self-consciously "hot" surface. [18 Sep 1989, p.81]

Pacino is the only real attraction. His character feels ancient, used-up, bone-tired -- vulnerable, maybe, but numb. We need to see this in his face, and Pacino can use his the way Triple-A uses maps. That face is still one of the great instruments of modern movies. [15 Sep 1989, p.G5]

Neither Price nor director Harold Becker can decide whether they're after a conventional mystery or a trenchant sexual-psychological study a la Last Tango in Paris. Like so many current movies, Love falters in the pay-off; despite lots of bull's-eye moments in the early going, it seems vaguely silly. [15 Sep 1989, p.4D]

Sea of Love is a satisfactory end-of-summer diversion, the kind of film that works as long as you ask nothing of it beyond simple escape. It's a slick, knowing genre film, through and through, a New York cop suspense thriller that we've seen countless times before. Read full review

While there isn't much mystery to this mystery - only a handful of suspects are interviewed - there is a compelling sense of helplessness underscoring the lives of all its characters. In that sense, Sea of Love is a gender bender Looking for Mr. Goodbar, a disturbing allegory for the '80s when the fear of AIDS and sexual violence only deters a percentage of the singles population from making its appointed meat-market rounds. [15 Sep 1989, p.6]

Sea Of Love has got a lot of things going for it: it's got two strong lead performances; it's got some down-and-dirty dialogue and a few sexy scenes and a couple of yuks and a nifty title tune. What it ain't got is plot, and thus suspense, and thus thrills. [15 Sep 1989]

Sea of Love is a lugubrious imitation of a second-rate television movie, over-produced and over-cast. Mr. Pacino tears into a role made out of rice paper, for messy results, while Miss Barkin does her level best to seem simultaneously sexy, homicidal and innocent, which is not easy. Read full review