Homicide

At times Mantegna's character seems little more than his dilemma, but Mamet's stylized dialogue crackles urgently and colorfully, each word landing with a weight you find only in good writing. The dislocation accelerates compellingly into ironic absurdity as Mamet lets his cop swing in the wind in this mordant parable of wrong things done for right reasons. There have been a lot of cop movies, but never one like Homicide. It has a way all its own of raising your consciousness by whacking you in the head. [18 Oct 1991, p.33]

The movie crackles with energy and life, and with throwaway slang dialogue by Mamet, who takes realistic speech patterns and simplifies them into a kind of hammer-and-nail poetry. Read full review

Purposely out of step with the feel-good-movie era, he offers caustic wit instead of gags, blunt questions instead of glib answers and challenges instead of reassurances. Bless him. Read full review

Television tends to trump movies when it comes to staging richly detailed cop dramas, but David Mamet’s 1991 film Homicide is the rare big-screen policier that can stand up to The Shield, The Wire, Hill Street Blues, and Homicide: Life On The Street. Read full review

David Mamet's Homicide is a brilliant muddle: compelling, exhilarating and, at the same time, profoundly dubious. Certainly there is greatness in it. And just as certainly the moral ice it skates on is precariously thin. It leads us into a forest of dark contradictions, then leaves us stranded, dazzled but bewildered, elated but perplexed. Read full review

Homicide isn't easy to take, but its vision is chillingly persuasive. [18 Oct 1991, p.B]

Homicide is a haunting picture that nags at you, days later. It provides no neat answers to the questions it raises about the merits of assimilation vs. maintaining one's ethnic, racial or religious identity, but rather captures something of the times. It might not be the most satisfying movie out there, yet there's a sense about it that, years from now, Homicide will seem even better than it does today.[18 Oct 1991, p.D1]

The Pulitzer-winning playwright’s movies are often a few steps ahead of their audiences, but Homicide seems to have intuitively anticipated its now-exemplary status. Read full review

This tough and unsparing film feels authentic; the cops are ever-railing against the FBI, and have sickly skin tones that probably result from too many bad burgers on the run. Homicide is provocative and, in its first hour, even hilarious. Its prestigious closing slot at the just-completed New York Film Festival was deserved. [10 Oct 1991, p.4D]

Mamet’s direction gives much of the film a bracing, refreshing tone as he works to express the shattering tensions of Gold’s work. Read full review

As a psychological drama, it's a sophisticated, gripping piece that unusually leaves you wanting to go on past its unsettling conclusion. Read full review

Even though it ends up falling off the tracks--maybe even because it falls off the tracks-- Homicide absolutely holds your interest with the passion that powerfully felt but ultimately screwy efforts often have. Read full review

The thematic development is a clever move on the filmmaker’s part, though the plot’s revelation comes as a heavy blow, not swift enough for the film that frames it. Read full review

The twist at the end is devastating, forcing you to view the film as a character study rather than a thriller, which places it in the Detective Story and The Offence bag...Gripping, though. Read full review

Homicide may not be Mamet's most accessible film, but it combines those elements of the playwright/director's work -- theatricality, stylization, rough poeticism -- that might be most off-putting to the typical movie audience with enough tension and mystery to keep them in their seats. Read full review

Homicide fails, finally. But its early success is so complete that the film is a must-see anyway. It changes the rules for cop movies. And when it is good, it is brilliant. [18 Oct 1991, p.7]

It's sad that HOMICIDE goes so drastically off the rails, because the first half of the film is a positive joy. Read full review

Scene by well-crafted scene. Mamet holds you in a tight grip. But this movie is troubling. His intricate murder mystery plot may be overdetermined -- it doesn't leave enough room to satisfactorily explore the richly suggestive themes of identity, loyalty and betrayal. Gold's transformation seems willed by artistic fiat. The bleakness of his ending is a kind of intellectual cop-out: it reduces all that we've seen to hollow ironies. Homicide plays like a house afire: what it adds up to may be less than it seems. [14 Oct 1991, p.70]

Homicide is engrossing, at least for a while, but the truly personal movie it wants to be remains locked up in Mamet’s head. Read full review

Homicide, which refers to metaphorical as well as literal murder, may be Mr. Mamet's most personal and deeply felt work. It's also his most blunt and despairing. Both "House of Games" and "Things Change" deal with conspiracies of some sort. Yet the scam that is the center of this film is unconvincing. Read full review