White Sands

Instead of leading to a crafty, emotionally cathartic payoff, WHITE SANDS gets more tiresome and banal as it goes along and all its threads are tied up with neat, if outlandish, explanations. WHITE SANDS would have been a better film if it had remained more dreamlike and less tied to plot mechanics. Read full review

After a fast, smart start, White Sands implodes like a black hole, sucking all goodwill from the atmosphere of the theater, turning those of us who started to love it into embittered cuckolds. Read full review

WITH the russet beauty of New Mexico as the setting, White Sands sports a nice look. With the angular Willem Dafoe in the lead role, White Sands boasts a solid performance. And with director Roger Donaldson (No Way Out) behind the camera, White Sands maintains a brisk pace. Now if it only had a script that made a lick of sense, White Sands might have been a good movie. It doesn't; it isn't. [24 Apr 1992]