Power

The diverse elements of the plot are fairly complicated, but Lumet is a strong director who knows how to effectively weave these components together. Gere, in one of his better performances, is the all-important connecting factor. The secondary roles are well cast, with Washington and Learned giving the most assured characterizations. Read full review

Power is cast exceedingly well, with director Lumet being one of the best-connected directors in New York. Power gives us the likes of Gene Hackman, Julie Christie, E.G. Marshall, Fritz Weaver and Beatrice Straight in supporting roles! [31 Jan 1986, p.30N]

The action is fast and involving until the three-quarter mark, when the David Himmelstein screenplay loses its focus and everything muddies up. [31 Jan 1986, p.23]

The movie exudes a sense of authenticity, of a subject researched well. The major difference, however, between "Network" and "Power" is that "Network" had a plot and "Power" does not. Read full review

Before it turns slack and sentimental, Power, Sidney Lumet's foray into the world of political consultants, crackles with a kind of moral static. Lumet lets you enjoy the pleasures of sleaze all the while he's shocking you with it -- the movie feels like a joy buzzer. And for a while, at least, you think this is exactly the acidulous, pell-mell satire you've been waiting for. Read full review

There is little of the gratuitous hysteria that usually mars Lumet's work, and David Himmelstein's busy script (no less than four campaigns are covered, when one or two would do) keeps things moving, though at the price of losing track of a couple of significant subplots. Read full review

Sidney Lumet's new film does have its absorbing aspects, but it doesn't provide any jolting insights into the pervasive process that turns elections into advertising wars in which candidates come fixing at us like Peter Pepsi and Calvin Coke. [10 Feb 1986, p.79]

Not so much about power as about p.r., this facile treatment of big-time politics and media, featuring Richard Gere as an amoral imagemaker, revolves around the unstartling premise that modern politicians and their campaigns are calculatedly packaged for TV. In spite of relentless jet-propelled location hopping that helps to stave off boredom, Power never gets airborne. Read full review

Power fails, not because it is badly done; Lumet and an exceptional cast do their best to bring it to life. But they are ultimately defeated by an overplotted script that offers few surprises and no real revelations about today's politics. [17 Feb 1986]

Ideas and issues in this film are as scarce as hen's teeth. In their place are little signposts that tell us what we are supposed to believe without thinking...Power is a well-meaning, witless, insufferably smug movie that -if it does anything at all, and I'm not sure it does - anesthetizes legitimate outrage at some of the things going on in our society. Read full review

If power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, why is Sidney Lumet’s Power the sexless diatribe that it is, all high-tech visuals and no emotional grounding? Its sole juiciness comes from Gene Hackman as a raffish Southern media consultant, well-cured in bourbon and branch water. The outlandish daring of his performance is almost rave-up enough to recommend the movie. Almost. Read full review

Despite making use of Hackman, Christie and Marshall in supporting roles, and actual US newscasters to cover the election results, the film is still a complete mess. Barely held together by Cy Coleman's powerful score, it finally falls apart thanks to the embarrassing amateurism of the party political broadcasts the characters produce, and the Vidal Sassoon world they inhabit. Read full review

It's a clumsy, laughable alarm-ringer from Sidney Lumet, who looks at the power-lunchers and the new right, and shakes his head rather audibly. [31 Jan 1986, p.23]

Full of intriguing possibilities, it is a film propelled by a puff of hot air, not a tornado of brilliantly realized political, philosophical and artistic ideas. Sometimes, it is so embarrassingly bad that one can only laugh and wonder how Lumet could have missed the windmill by so much more than a mile. [31 Jan 1986, p.D9]