Mean Streets
Warner Bros. | Release Date: October 14, 1973 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
96
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 11 Critic Reviews
Positive:
11
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets isn’t so much a gangster movie as a perceptive, sympathetic, finally tragic story about how it is to grow up in a gangster environment. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
Mean Streets is a brilliantly made film--terrifically acted, sharply photographed and crisply edited. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
The movie's blazing energy is still astounding; the vérité street-scenes are terrific and Scorsese's pioneering use of popular music is genuinely thrilling. Read full review
100
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
Scorsese directs with a breathless, head-on energy which infuses the performances, the sharp fast talk, the noise, neon and violence with a charge of adrenalin. One of the best American films of the decade. Read full review
100
EmpireSimon Braund
Terrific. Top shelf talent at the top of their game, working immediately before they would change Hollywood. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKevin Thomas
Mean Streets is a jazzy riff of a movie, zigging and zagging as if to the beat of snapping fingers. Its greatness lies in its leanness, with nary a word, a move, a gesture that's nonessential. Read full review
100
The New York TimesVincent Canby
No matter how bleak the milieu, no matter how heartbreaking the narrative, some films are so thoroughly, beautifully realized they have a kind of tonic effect that has no relation to the subject matter. Such a film is Mean Streets. Read full review
100
The New YorkerPauline Kael
Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets is a true original of our period, a triumph of personal filmmaking. It has its own hallucinatory look; the charac­ters live in the darkness of bars, with lighting and color just this side of lurid. It has its own unsettling, episodic rhythm and a high-charged emo­tional range that is dizzyingly sensual. Read full review
80
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
A galvanizing piece of personal filmmaking. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
Martin Scorsese's intrusive insistence on his abstract, metaphysical theme—the possibility of modern sainthood—marks this 1973 film, his first to attract critical notice, as still somewhat immature, yet the acting and editing have such an original, tumultuous force that the picture is completely gripping. Read full review
70
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
Scorsese is exceptionally good at guiding his largely unknown cast to near-flawless recreations of types. Outstanding in this regard is De Niro. Read full review
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