In the Cut
Screen Gems | Release Date: October 22, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
47
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
19
Negative:
9
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Dallas ObserverGregory Weinkauf
Ryan's performance burns with a rare and passionate veracity. The other half of the delight comes from director Jane Campion, whose sensualist eye and scabrous heart infuse In the Cut with guts and glory. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
If In the Cut falls short of the masterpiece Campion intended, it's unquestionably the most ambitious and important film to come along in months. Read full review
80
Film ThreatClint Morris
Like Basic Instinct, it's a sexually charged thriller centering around a cop and a sex-mad and slightly perplexing woman. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Grim and sordid though it often is, the film has a steady flow of visually absorbing images. It's an art movie for the masses. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
The movie has a nasty, creepy edge that never lets up, and the characters are deliberately grating and alienating. This is a thriller that, like some classic noirs, glories in its own mean aura, its casual profanity and grotesque violence. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Actually, the film may be too grubby and sordid and ghoulish for its own box-office good. It's certainly going to send more than a few of the New Zealand director's sensitive women fans running from the auditorium. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesManohla Dargis
Jane Campion's astonishingly beautiful new film may be the most maddening and imperfect great movie of the year. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
The best (which also means the sexiest) Campion feature since "The Piano," featuring Meg Ryan's best performance to date and an impressive one by Mark Ruffalo. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
As a thriller, In the Cut, with its red herring characters and plot twists, turns dopey and predictable. As a portrait of a single woman, burned by love and wary of what's in store, Campion's movie has its trenchant, telling passages. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Meg Ryan does such an effective job of evoking her sexually hungry lonely girl that it might have been better to just follow that line and not distract her and the audience with the distraction of a crime plot. Read full review
60
The New York TimesDana Stevens
A disjointed, sometimes fascinating mélange of moods, associations and effects. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Ryan is raw and remarkably good, but the film's real star is New York. Draped in post-9/11 anxiety and brimming with a free-floating fear, the city hasn't appeared this threatening since the '70s. Read full review
60
EmpireEmma Cochrane
Romantic images are subverted, the sex scenes are graphic and desperate. It's less grim than Susanna Moore's original novella, but the foreshadowing that all is not right is in everything, from the music to the dialogue. Read full review
58
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
An intermittently gorgeous and evocative film that's so taken with its trangressively bloody and erotic content, it neglects such fussy niceties as coherent plotting and the creation of characters of middling intelligence, plausible psychology or sympathetic nature. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
Emerges as a frustrating cop-out. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
If your reason for seeing In the Cut is to watch America's sweetheart stripped bare, you'll get what you're looking for. On the other hand, if you're looking for a good movie, this one will disappoint. Read full review
50
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Beautifully crafted and highlighted by an arresting change-of-pace perf by Meg Ryan as an English teacher erotically awakened by a homicide detective. But the story's unpalatable narrative holes and dramatic missteps will hold sway over the pic's better qualities. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
Though the oppressive artiness makes the early scenes fairly ridiculous, the director's odd methods add rare tension to the climax, as it becomes evident that the finale won't be so predictable in Campion's hands. Read full review
50
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Aggressively grim and gory. Read full review
50
New York PostLou Lumenick
A disappointing erotic thriller from director Jane Campion that amounts to an implausible update on "Looking for Mr. Goodbar." Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The result, sadly, is a mess. Read full review
50
USA TodayMike Clark
An OK mood piece but story-hungry murder mystery that flubs its whodunit fundamentals. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
More ambitious, but also much harder to swallow than the average Hollywood hack effort, In the Cut is a muddle of thriller and art-house phantasmagoria. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Ultimately never slices things as sharply as it attempts, but it’s definitely a cut above. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
At once belabored and muddled movie, whose dreamy visual style and daring sexual material can't elide glaring inconsistencies in tone, plot and logic. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
Campion is dabbling in several different types of movie here: police procedural, film noir, romantic melodrama, sex fantasia. None really succeeds. Read full review
40
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Isn't just a movie about decapitation; it's a decapitated movie. It has no idea where its head is at. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
A remarkably dislikable film, long on atmosphere -- I admired Dion Beebe's brooding cinematography -- and desperately short on vitality.
40
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
Campion and company may like to think they've made something provocative, moody and new but it's really just "Looking For Mr. Goodbar" with extra nuts. Read full review
38
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The movie is all moist grime and seedy atmosphere, and it's certainly something to look at: It's beautifully lurid. But it's an empty, unengaging movie, and by the end, it has become ridiculous, too. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeTy Burr
It might even work if In the Cut was remotely convincing as a thriller, but Campion can't help wrinkling her nose at genre. Read full review
37
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Campion has made something that's almost unbearably pretentious. Read full review
30
The New YorkerDavid Denby
In the Cut is completely controlled and all of a piece, and yet, apart from one performance (Mark Ruffalo), it's terrible--a thriller devoid of incidental pleasures or humor, or even commonplace reality. [27 October 2003, p. 112]
30
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
As a movie, it must stand or fall by intense chemistry between the lead characters. Sadly, as co-written by Campion and Moore, In the Cut suffers from a fatal emotional and erotic imbalance. Read full review
30
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Although Ryan is cannily cast against type, she doesn't bring much more than muttery incoherence and nudity to the role. Read full review
25
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Campion has no clue how to sustain suspense and no actress of the caliber of Holly Hunter, Nicole Kidman or Kate Winslet (her recent leading ladies) in the main role. Read full review
25
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
In the Cut is a disaster. Familiar to the bone, arty on the surface, it could serve as the doomed pilot for a nightmare TV spinoff: Law & Order: Literary Victims Unit. Read full review
0
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Ryan radiates neither desire nor terror. She's freeze-dried in a world of lifelessly abstract feminine fear, and so is the movie. Read full review
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