The Phantom

Despite the pleasant feel and fun performance from Zane there's something missing from this superhero adventure. Read full review

Whether the film excites you or not, it does excel with some glossy art direction that looks suitably slick in a quality picture transfer. Clear and sharp, this is a pleasure to watch. Read full review

Yet the raiders-of-the-lost-bones plot and period detail remind us that post-Indiana Jones, a cliff-hanger needs action more blockbuster than lackluster, plus dialogue better balanced between winking kitsch and comfort-food corn. Read full review

Little expense has been spared in putting this adventure fantasy on screen, with vintage planes and automobiles by the yard, striking Art Deco production design and breathtaking Thai coastal locations. A pity that the performers are so uncharismatic, with leading man Billy Zane plastic and soulless in Lycra, and not much more winning when he switches to playboy mode to woo free-spirited politico's daughter Kristy Swanson (pertly anonymous). Read full review

The pleasures are familiar, but not the least bit inspired. Read full review

Without peril, The Phantom can only get by on dazzle, and there's not quite enough of that to hold interest -- unless you're 8 years old and seeing dazzle for the first time. Read full review

Essentially, this is RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK without the narrative savvy and self-referential cleverness. Read full review

A second-rate film about a third-rate superhero played by a C-list actor.

Sorry, folks, but he just looks too much like one of the Fruit-of-the-Loom guys. [7 June 1996, p.7G]

While reviving the "The Phantom" may have seemed like a good idea at the time, it's one comic book superhero that just doesn't translate that well to the screen. [7 June 1996, p.46]

Wincer shoots the whole thing - which is dressed up with cherry-red vintage fighter planes and boxy Pan Am Clippers and offers a few sequences in Thai lagoons of gloriously shocking turquoise - in a manner that renders even surefire stuff (collapsing rope bridges, horseback rides through crowded Manhattan streets) ho-hum. Kids of a certain age may be distracted by the bright colors and broad acting - the film is, at least, devoid of any gratuitously nasty violence - but most audience members who find their way into the theater will wonder when the Ghost Who Walks is going to walk off into the sunset. It ain't soon enough. [7 June 1996, p.03]

Based on the comic strip created in 1936 by Lee Falk, The Phantom is a handsomely produced, numbingly impersonal adventure film that fails to do anything new with the format. [7 June 1996, p.49]