Waist Deep
Focus Features | Release Date: June 23, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
37
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 22 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
8
Negative:
10
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Sometimes excessiveness and implausibility are virtues in disguise. Movies this enjoyable don't come about by accident. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyGregory Kirschling
Curtis Hall keeps slipping in surprising social and emotional flavorings rarely found in the genre. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Director Vondie Curtis Hall gives this virtually nonstop crime actioner, set against the mean streets of Los Angeles, pleasing noirish touches along with larger-than-life-size characters. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneJessica Reaves
The performances are pretty good--with the exception of the nauseatingly sweet H. Hunter Hall (the son of the director) as Junior and a one-note scowl from rapper The Game, who plays Meat--and the screenplay, by Hall and Darin Scott, has some genuinely funny moments. Read full review
60
VarietyJustin Chang
Waist Deep packs considerable energy and style into its tale of an ex-con forced back into a life of crime to rescue his kidnapped son. Yet the kinetic direction and occasional sly humor can't disguise the tale's banal brutality or pump much excitement into its routinized pileup of shoot-outs and car chases. Read full review
60
Washington PostTeresa Wiltz
No, it's not a great movie. It is, however, an interesting one. Read full review
58
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
By most of the ways movies are usually judged, pretty much of a mess. The camerawork is jerky and distracting, the dialogue is cliched and the story makes so little sense that the script seems to have been improvised by the actors as they went along. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Billed as an action thriller, it plays out as an urban-fairy tale version of "Bonnie and Clyde," with an ending suitable for a Harlequin romance. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
Waist Deep is a cynical excuse for the writer and director (and talented actor) Vondie Curtis-Hall to sock some money away for the kids' college tuition. It's as if he watched "Get Rich or Die Tryin' " and thought, "It needs more palm trees." Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyChuck Wilson
Gibson and Good deliver such emotionally honest performances that we wish them a happy ending, no matter how many movie clichés have to be trotted out to get there. Read full review
50
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Unapologetically a B movie, its narrative premise whittled down to a mean little nub and placed carefully on the borderline between the wildly implausible and the completely absurd. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesGene Seymour
As its plot thickens, Waist Deep gets more outlandish. The whole mess empties out into an overextended car chase through Los Angeles. Read full review
38
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
A deep waste is more like it. Read full review
38
Miami HeraldPeter Debruge
With an exciting way out, the audience would have gladly overlooked all the loose ends from earlier in the movie. But the way Hall plays it, he undermines the early style and intelligence of his all-black action movie, taking audiences for the wrong kind of ride in the end. Read full review
30
Village VoiceBill Gallo
For its ever shifting attitudes toward men, women, and murder, Waist Deep is one of the sloppiest movies ever to reach the screen. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleSteve Davis
The lengths to which a parent will go to save a child can be gut-wrenching stuff, but Waist Deep rarely hits you in the pit of your stomach. Blame it on the lame screenplay, which unwisely (and badly) gravitates more toward the crime-spree elements of "Bonnie and Clyde" than the fierce parental instincts of, say, "Kramer vs. Kramer" or "Lorenzo's Oil." Read full review
25
New York PostLou Lumenick
Slow-witted and occasionally unintentionally hilarious. Read full review
25
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
The cast, especially The Game, does a fairly good job with this meager material, but it's like trying to make chateaubriand out of Spam. Read full review
25
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
Like the forgotten blaxploitation schlock it often resembles, the film aspires to nothing but cheap thrills, but while it's plenty cheap, it's far from thrilling. Read full review
25
PremiereMonica A. Reyhani
To be fair Deep does have one thing going for it. While the movie never seems to end, and when it does… oh man. Think "Aquaman" meets "Training Day." It proves that sometimes a crappy drama is sometimes just a comedy in disguise. Read full review
0
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
It's about as much fun for the viewer as being dropped into a virtual-reality version of a highway-safety crash film. Hall writes and directs with the finesse of a rusty hatchet. Read full review
0
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Director Vondie Curtis-Hall has managed to top (or should I say "bottom"?) his last theatrical release, Mariah Carey's "Glitter," with a movie that offers not one praiseworthy moment: not a scene, not a performance, not a technical achievement, not even a line of dialogue. Read full review
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