The Shadow

The period detail, the makeup effects, the computer-generated transformations, and Jerry Goldsmith's brassy score are all excellent. The Shadow also manages to make fun of itself without ever letting the self-parody get out of hand, or disintegrate into camp. For what is essentially a summer slugfest, The Shadow also has unusually rich character performances. [01 Jul 1994]

The movie has a hallucinatory intensity that is skillfully mixed with light-comic relief and straight-faced farce. It never takes itself too seriously, and never veers too far in the other direction by surrendering to self-parody. [01 Jul 1994, p.3D]

If you respond to film noir, if you like dark streets and women with scarlet lips and big fast cars with running boards, the look of this movie will work some kind of magic. The story itself may not be so mesmerizing, but who really cares? Style and tone are everything with a movie like this, which wants to bring to life a dark secret place in the lurid pulp imagination. Read full review

The Shadow is more than just the product of the trend to make high- tech features out of '30s superheroes. It's adventurous film-making, genuinely enthusiastic and genuinely inspired. [01 Jul 1994, p.C1]

Style is almost everything here, and it's a tough call whether the star is handsomer than the sets. Read full review

Director Mulcahy's fast-moving dynamic, aided by cinematographer Stephen H. Burum's rhythmic shots, editor Peter Honess' zesty punctuation and composer Jerry Goldsmith's titanic score, brings necessary bulk to The Shadow's surface dimension. [01 Jul 1994]

The film still looks great, as does Baldwin, but the tense tale of the fight against Shiwan Khan -- a cooly evil John Lone -- becomes a silly, sloppily developed world takeover story pulled from the Batman TV show, characters stall, and the humor goes broad. Read full review

Like its own hero - and so many recent films - The Shadow suffers from a split personality. At some moments, this can have a poetic impact. More often, though, it seems the result of sloppiness. [01 Jul 1994, p.05]

The Shadow's problems have nothing to do with the basic premise; rather, they are flaws in execution. The setup promises something more invigorating than it delivers. Read full review

The Shadow is more a triumph of window-dressing than cinema. It's dress-up, not drama, but it's a pile of style. [01 Jul 1994, p.49]

Although Baldwin helps add substance to this frequently flippant movie with his earnest (when called for) performance, The Shadow isn't as grave or as chilling as the old radio serial. Here, the Shadow is resurrected in the service of tongue-in-cheek summer escapism. [01 Jul 1994, p.29]

Despite its shoddy script it does benefit from superior art direction that looks a million dollars. Read full review

The film has a wonderful super-production look and Baldwin's Shadow breezes through via nifty invisible effects, but the plot never really gels, and for an action fantasy is rather cold. Read full review

Alec Baldwin, star of The Shadow, looks great in his tux, and maybe he can even act, but the script doesn't give him the chance. It can't decide whether it's in the humour department or the thrills business. [01 Jul 1994]

Directed by Russell Mulcahy (the Highlander movies), the movie never generates enough suspense to keep the storyline moving. The visual effects are splashed about carelessly, weakening the would-be climactic showdown. [01 Jul 1994, p.G5]

The movie, half camp, half straight, has its moments, but Australian director Russell Mulcahy lacks the loopy flair of Batman's Tim Burton. Still, the art deco -- 1930s New York, Miller's silvery dresses -- is gorgeous. [11 Jul 1994, p.50]

The Shadow does have its moments, which include a googly-eyed mad scientist portrayed by Tim Curry, a smoking billboard for Llama cigarettes and an animated dagger capable of biting he who wields it. Of course, they too are crushed under the weight of this overproduced but underwhelming monolith. Read full review

THE SHADOW is the worst kind of homage, recreating childhood enthusiasms in a manner so clunky and unsophisticated that it's actively off-putting, while entirely missing their essence. Read full review

While the movie’s re-creations of New Deal-era Times Square and other period New York locations are impressive indeed, screenwriter David Koepp (who scripted Jurassic Park, which shares The Shadow‘s craven refusal to take its genre seriously) and director Russell Mulcahy sink the movie through their lack of conviction. Read full review

If ever a film looked exactly the way you hoped and imagined it would, The Shadow is it. But if ever a film made you wince whenever its actors opened their mouths, The Shadow is that as well. Read full review

Despite similarities as a vigilante creature of the night, however, the Shadow — a character that enjoyed its greatest success in radio after being created in pulp novels — lacks the visceral appeal of Batman and won’t strike the same chord with moviegoers. Read full review

The Shadow shows what can happen when you overdress pulp. You wind up with something gorgeous and suffocated, bejeweled trash floundering in its own oversplendid stuffings. [01 Jul 1994, p.H]

This new film adaptation of the old radio serial is like Batman (1989) without its spark of pop-cult genius. [01 Jul 1994, p.9]

As written by David Koepp, this familiar and pokey plot respects the Shadow mythos while draining its vitality, until it becomes just another tiresome action flick and a further reminder that Jurassic Park, which Koepp co-wrote, was also a poorly written movie bolstered by awesome special effects. [01 Jul 1994, p.D3]

The Shadow comes off as a gussied-up attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the recent Batman and Dick Tracy films, and unfortunately, it's closer to the latter. It should have stayed in the shadows. [01 Jul 1994, p.6B]

Despite classy production values, Mulcahy's attempt to emulate the sombre appeal of Tim Burton's Batman movies is too episodic, sketchy and uneven. Read full review

Without a compelling story at the center, this is just a mediocre MTV-Wagnerian fantasy. Read full review

The Shadow was one of the original pulp heroes, but his movie is more copycat than pioneer. Read full review

The Shadow, like 1991’s The Rocketeer, tries to pass off its retro thinness as a quasi joke, but it’s a desperate strategy. The filmmakers seem to be kidding everyone — the audience and themselves — and that just leaves us waiting for this particular flashback to fizzle away. Read full review

A hodgepodge of violent action, ostentatious effects, and lunkheaded jokes, stitched together by a hackneyed plot. [01 Jul 1994, p.13]