Silver City
Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment | Release Date: September 17, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
47
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
13
Negative:
10
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Leaving aside Huston's bland acting and a few other flaws, Sayles's politically charged drama raises a rousing number of issues and ideas, inviting us to ponder them and draw our own conclusions. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
That Sayles is able to say these things in the context of a compelling story with well-defined characters makes this one of the early fall triumphs of 2004. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The movie's strength, then, is not in its outrage, but in its cynicism and resignation. Read full review
80
EmpireAngie Errigo
Smart, intriguing, funny and sad, with some primo wisecracking dialogue. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The real action in Silver City happens on the fringes, where the mischief is. Daryl Hannah is spice incarnate as Dickie's sexy screw-up sister. Billy Zane plays a lobbyist with insinuating soullessness. And Dreyfuss feasts on the snappiest lines. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
An effective political lampoon. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
It comes off as a fairly straightforward assault on the kind of political corruption that has crossed party lines in movies since the dawn of the medium, and in books before that. The pleasure here is in the dialogue, the characters and the cast. Read full review
75
New York PostMegan Lehmann
A wickedly sexy Daryl Hannah is particularly memorable as the Pilager family's black sheep Maddy. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
It's a cracking good detective yarn with hints of "Chinatown" and Raymond Chandler, and it's a sharp political lampoon of things we're all reading about on today's front pages. Read full review
70
The A.V. ClubTasha Robinson
Sayles' version of reality is grim, but it provides an enlightening, grounding reminder that there's a far more crucial world of politics going on behind the headlines. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneRobert K. Elder
It's a dense, winding tale with all of Sayles' razor-sharp dialogue and intrigue. But instead of tracing character paths, Sayles sacrifices solid storytelling in favor of forwarding a political (and environmental) ideology. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
Huston, unfortunately, is never really believable as a man rediscovering lost principles; he feels out of place in this otherwise fine ensemble. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Though there's nothing wrong with moral outrage, it doesn't always aid the telling of a complex story. More subtlety might have worked better. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Pointed, unsubtle political satire. Read full review
60
Film ThreatHeidi Martinuzzi
Slow paced, but interesting. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
Using Dickie Pilager as a stand-in for George W. Bush seems too coy a tactic for these scabrous times. For better or worse, we want the real--or at least, the "real"-deal. Read full review
50
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Nobody in it seems organically connected to anybody else. In a movie devoted to the idea that everything and everyone is connected, this is a serious failing, and it undermines Mr. Sayles's noble intentions. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
There’s definitely ore to be mined in Silver City but Sayles’ pan comes up with only particles of dust. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
A series of miscalculations caused this project to lose its way, until what we're left with is a film that should involve us more than it does. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
Wildly uneven, with long stretches as dull as Dickie. Read full review
50
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
The satire doesn't go far enough. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Long, windy, diffuse in its message and blunt in its satire. Read full review
50
The New YorkerDavid Denby
The plot of Silver City is movieish in the extreme, with filthy abandoned mines subbing for the bars and alleys of urban noir, but it’s no more than mild cheese--“The Big Sleep” or “Chinatown” without the malice, rigorous design, and narrative epiphanies. Read full review
40
VarietyDavid Rooney
As both political satire and noirish murder mystery, this Newmarket pickup may be too meandering and unemphatic for wide consumption. Read full review
40
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Sayles, it seems, doesn't think much of his audience, and the tone of his discourse is only nominally less pandering than a politician's. Read full review
40
SlateDavid Edelstein
Takes off into the comic stratosphere in its first sequence and then slowly sinks to Earth, made logy by its noble means and Sayles' increasing inability to shoot anything but fat clots of undramatic talk in the most boring manner imaginable. Read full review
38
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Essentially a series of walking character sketches. The storytelling is slack and lackluster, the cliches rampant. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeTy Burr
As it is, the movie only shudders to life when Dickie Pilager's onscreen. Read full review
33
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
Sayles has committed the cardinal sin of putting his politics ahead of his characters, and the result is predictably lame. Read full review
30
TimeRichard Schickel
An uninvolving muddle. Read full review
30
L.A. WeeklyJon Strickland
Fails to allow the talented ensemble time to develop "Sunshine State’s" fine, Altmanesque ensemble feel, again and again missing the human and leaving cartoons that satisfy only as agitprop. Read full review
30
Washington PostDesson Thomson
It tries unsuccessfully to make a wry gumshoe noir out of an overarching, cross-sectional political diagram. Read full review
30
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
If Sayles had persuaded me he knew anything about Bush, his background, or his entourage that isn't already well-known, I might have felt more like laughing. Read full review
25
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Silver City may be the mustiest political-conspiracy tale ever filmed; it's like "Chinatown" rewritten by Ralph Nader. Read full review
20
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
It wears out its welcome well before its halfway point, by which time you're either so tangled up in plot points you're strangling, or so bored you just wish you were being strangled. Read full review
20
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Mr. Sayle's portrait is painfully unfunny, and the movie as a whole is a plodding polemic.
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