The Little Drummer Girl

Warner Bros. | Release Date: October 19, 1984

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

54	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 10 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Jack Kroll

Hill has never been better in shaping and pacing a movie that has the excitement, romance and resonance of the best popular art. [15 Oct 1984, p.118]

Paul Attanasio

Little Drummer Girl is the most trenchant, chilling vision of the psychological fallout of spying since Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation. Read full review

Rita Kempley

Overall, this is a well-crafted, carefully paced, and appropriately cerebral work -- if the intention is to ape Le Carre's writing style, that is, and like the writer, de-glamorize the spy genre. If you're a fan of the style, this film will please.

Roger Ebert

The Little Drummer Girl lacks the two essential qualities it needs to work: It's not comprehensible, and it's not involving. Read full review

Vincent Canby

What the film demonstrates most obviously is that when there is this much plot on the screen, there isn't time for actors to develop anything much in the way of plausibility of characterization. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

A disappointingly flat film adaptation of one of John Le Carre's top novels. Read full review

Laurie Horn

The great strength of Le Carre's novel was that it twisted the psyches of the characters as it tensed their muscles. This movie muscles through the action, but it takes the psychic tension out of the twists. [19 Oct 1984, p.D6]

Pauline Kael

The tragedy of these two peoples, killing each other because each has just claims to the same plot of ground, is presented with efficient, impersonal evenhandedness, so that we care about neither of them.

Jay Scott

A bouillon cube, a bland and boring thing with only a meagre resemblance to its source. [23 Oct 1984]

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Crammed into 130 minutes of screen time, Le Carre's story loses much of its motivation, and although there is plenty of action and suspense, often it seems that the action is happening in the wrong places to the wrong people. Read full review