The Last Tycoon

Paramount Pictures | Release Date: November 19, 1976

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

57	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 11 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

EmpireWilliam Thomas

De Niro's little known masterclass makes this essential viewing. Read full review

Michael Wilmington

A curiously cool, but very intelligent movie. [02 Jan 2000, p.19C]

Mick LaSalle

The drama surrounding the romance gets a little too precious -- though I loved it 15 years ago; maybe I'm getting cynical -- but everything else is excellent, including Jack Nicholson, who is subtle and sly in a small, key role. [18 Jan 2004]

Vincent Canby

The Last Tycoon doesn't really build to any climax. We follow it horizontally, as if it were a landscape being surveyed by a camera in a long pan-shot. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Although uneven, the result is still a lot better than Hollywood's last look at itself (Day of the Locust) and its last slice of Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby). Read full review

Kevin Thomas

A luminous, ambitious but only fitfully alive adaptation (by Harold Pinter) of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished Hollywood novel. Robert De Niro is wonderful as the extraordinarily complex, subtle and perceptive Monroe Stahr, whom Fitzgerald based on Irving Thalberg. [01 Oct 1989, p.7]

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Harold Pinter's cold and gnomic script seems partly to blame, as well as interfering producer Sam Spiegel; but if you forget that you're supposed to be seeing something meaningful or important, this is pretty watchable. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Fitzgerald's unfinished novel transfers awkwardly to the screen but is saved from oblivion by that always-fascinating actor De Niro, who essays the role of the movie mogul (based on MGM's Irving Thalberg). Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Producer Sam Spiegel's contribution is admirable, but Elia Kazan's direction of the Pinter plot seems unfocussed though craftsmanlike. Robert De Niro's performance as the inscrutable boy-wonder of films is mildly intriguing. Read full review

Pauline Kael

Probably the first mistake was to approach the book cap in hand, and the next was to hire Pinter; the film needed a writer who would fill in what's missing--Pinter's art is the art of taking away.

The Observer (UK)Philip French

A generally lacklustre affair. [03 Mar 2013, p.44]