Naked

This is a movie of virtuoso nihilism and scorn. Read full review

This is a painful movie to watch. But it is also exhilarating, as all good movies are, because we are watching the director and actors venturing beyond any conventional idea of what a modern movie can be about. Here there is no plot, no characters to identify with, no hope. Read full review

Mike Leigh's stunning, corrosive Naked is one of the best movies of the year, and one of the toughest... Its manic mix of tenderness and degradation, hilarity and scariness, keeps you dangerously off balance. Read full review

even in the notable ranks of Leigh's movie, TV and theater work-an oeuvre embracing high comedy, biting comment and shivering pathos-Naked is extraordinary. In the hands of Leigh and his magnificently gifted, gutsy cast, these days and nights on London's streets burn themselves on our minds. Read full review

Naked is one of the most scorchingly compelling films in years, Mike Leigh's masterpiece, an unflinching vision of civilization in retreat, life as apocalypse. [4 Mar. 1994, p.51]

By the end of the film, there's even something vaguely inspirational about our antihero's painful journey through the bowels of his self-created hell. Read full review

Naked is a mesmerizing character study, an attempt to stretch the emotional boundaries of truth on film as far as they will go. For once we think we've seen as much of Johnny as we can take, like an etching by Escher we start to see something else, a glimpse of another person easily missed. Read full review

Those in search of escapism should not look to this motion picture, but anyone willing to assume the risk of facing the ugliness of Johnny's world will find a startling, gut-wrenching, eye-opening experience. Read full review

It's appalling, it's wicked, it's bleak, and it's very funny. In fact, the movie's ability to disturb us is directly linked to its ability to amuse us. We're made to feel guilty precisely because we're made to laugh - seeing something so sordid shouldn't be so engaging. [28 Jan. 1994]

Every movie year has one, and now it's Britain's Mike Leigh who's conjured up the professional reviewer's worst nightmare: the picture so original, well-acted and witty that it must be given its ample due - despite being heavy on components guaranteed to bum out all but the most frequent moviegoers. [23 Dec. 1993, p.5D]

Leigh’s gallery of haves and have-nots, of emotional anorexics and exploited deadbeats, carries a strong political charge that’s there for the taking. But the pic also plays simply as a black, offbeat comedy with a romantic undertow. Read full review

Naked is as corrosive and sometimes as funny as anything Mr. Leigh has done to date. It's loaded with wild flights of absurd rhetoric and encounters with characters so eccentric that they seem to have come directly from life. Nobody would dare imagine them. Read full review

Mike Leigh sees a Britain everybody knows exists but would rather not think about, and this is a nightmare journey, at once horrific and funny, through a twilight London of the excluded and the rejected. Read full review

This is 90-proof, single-malt stuff. You sip it neat and you don't handle heavy machinery afterward. This movie will stay with you long after you've seen it, thanks to Thewlis's performance, Leigh's direction, Andrew Dickson's haunting bass-and-harp soundtrack, cinematographer Dick Pope's indelible images -- and the unalloyed, naked conviction of it all. Read full review

Like Johnny's rants, Naked is a revelation, a parable of spiritual homelessness and the terror it engenders. Read full review

This apocalyptic vision of London-as-Hell is a far cry from Leigh's earlier work, the relatively gentle social comedies, High Hopes and Life Is Sweet. But, working with the actors in his usual improvisatory style, Leigh dares to drop into depths he has never before explored. With its aura of horror and hopelessness, Naked is a very brave work. If you can take it, it's a film you won't soon forget. [28 Jan. 1994, p.AE13]

The darker this visionary film gets -- and it gets very dark -- the less comic and the more chilling it becomes. At the same time, it grows more brilliant as a view of modern society poisoned by a battering incivility or cruel exploitation that, in Leigh's view, is played out most profoundly in gender conflict. When ''Naked'' isn't beaning your brain, it's twisting a screwdriver between the wires of your nerves. [28 Jan. 1994, p.C1]

You may feel like you need a drink and a shower when you come out of "Naked," but at least you'll know you've been somewhere new. Read full review

The astounding performance of David Thewlis as Johnny is in no small measure responsible for the success of Naked. Talking his way through every scene, his portrait of this drifter is mesmerizingly appealing, hateful, humorous, self-destructive, honest and compelling. Still, I am unable to separate my loathing for this character from my feelings about the formal achievements of this movie. The effect may be one of naked observation but the view is ugly and corrosive. Read full review

It's Leigh's rawest, most self-indulgent film to date. At times the movie seems to go on and on, noisily spinning its wheels. There's no dramatic arc to speak of, and the scenes in his girlfriend's flat are much less involving than Johnny's street experiences... Whenever the movie lets Johnny loose to wreak his own brand of hellish emotional havoc, however, Naked seethes with primal fury. [25 Feb. 1994, p.G5]

Mike Leigh's awesomely overpraised Naked is that one-in-a-hundred mediocre movie that contains a genuinely compelling performance. [4 Mar. 1994, p.L27]