American Me

Universal Pictures | Release Date: March 13, 1992

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

66	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 11 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Watch Now

Stream On

Buy on

Stream On

Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Roger Ebert

The movie was mostly shot on two difficult locations: The streets of East L.A., and inside Folsom Prison. It knows these worlds. The language, the clothes, the attitudes, are all shown with the understated conviction of a director who is sure of his material. Read full review

James Berardinelli

Gut-wrenching, brutal, and powerful, American Me is not enjoyable in the conventional sense, but nevertheless stands out as one of the year's most impressive purely dramatic offerings. Read full review

Kirk Honeycutt

In American Me, Edward James Olmos has achieved several important goals, but one outweighs the rest: he has made a film that will scare the hell out of any inner-city youth not already lost to the hopelessness of gangs, drugs and prison. [9 Mar 1992]

Marjorie Baumgarten

American Me is crafted with heart and conviction and intelligence. It demands no less of its audience. It insists that there are no quick fixes, but that solutions are of the utmost urgency. It demonstrates how the capacity for change resides within each individual. Read full review

Peter Travers

Olmos is unsparing in depicting the dark side of human behavior. His in-your-face style stresses the urgency of a situation most of us choose to ignore. Though powerful, the film is sometimes preachy; there's a sense that information is being disseminated instead of dramatized. But it's hard to believe anyone will remain unmoved by American Me or its final shattering image of human desolation. Read full review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Apart from some softening of the extreme violence (through manipulations on the sound track) and some fancy intercutting, this is every bit as unpleasant as Olmos can make it, but occasionally edifying as well. Read full review

Staff (Not credited)

The criminal life is portrayed with all the glamour of a mugshot in American Me, a powerful indictment of the cycle of violence bred by the prisons and street culture. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not credited)

An ambitious drama about gang warfare and the culture of violence, American Me is nothing if not earnest. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean it's a particularly successful film; for every bluntly powerful moment, there's another that's crude and obvious, sometimes excruciatingly so. Read full review

Janet Maslin

But Mr. Olmos's direction, from a screenplay by Floyd Mutrux and Desmond Nakano, is dark, slow and solemn, so much so that it diverts energy from the film's fundamental frankness. Violent as it is, American Me is seldom dramatic enough to bring its material to life. Read full review

Jay Scott

American Me is a graphic and honest effort that, unfortunately, becomes a catalogue of other films on similar subjects. Its depiction of prison life is much too slow, too long, too repetitive and too familiar. [13 Mar 1992, p. C3]

Desson Howe

This solo project by first-time producer/director Edward James Olmos makes itself out to be hard-hitting, social commentary. But it's too longwinded and cliched to deserve that description. [13 Mar 1992, p. N47]