As suspense craftsmanship, the picture is trim, brutal and exciting; it was directed in the sleekest style by the veteran urban-action director Don Siegel, and Lalo Schifrin's pulsating, jazzy electronic trickery drives the picture forward. It's also a remarkably single-minded attack on liberal values, with each prejudicial detail in place - a kind of hardhat The Fountainhead.

Despite Peckinpah’s artistry, there’s something basically grim and crude in Straw Dogs. It’s no news that men are capable of violence, but while most of us want to find ways to control that violence, Sam Peckinpah wants us to know that that’s all hypocrisy.

There's no motivating idea visible in this version, produced abroad by Hal B. Wallis, and the leaden script, by John Hale, lacks romantic spirit and dramatic sense.

Cassavetes built this movie on a small conceit--a love affair between two people who are wildly unsuited to each other--and it doesn't work.

The message is not very different from that of Hello, Dolly! or Mame, but Harold's flaccid asexuality (he's like a sickly infant, a limp, earthbound Peter Pan) and Maude's advanced stage of pixiness give that message a special freaky quality. And the film has been made with considerable wit and skill.

Unimaginative Bond picture that is often noisy when it means to be exciting.

The picture strains for seriousness now and then, but even when it makes a fool of itself it's still funny.

This whole production is a mixture of wizardry and ineptitude; the picture has enjoyable moments but it's as uncertain of itself as the title indicates.

As obsequiously respectful as if it had been made about living monarchs who might reward the producer with a command performance. Viewers are put in the position of celebrity-lovers eager to partake of the home life of the dullest of the Czars.

This joyously square musical succeeds in telling one of the root stories of American Life.

It’s plain and uncondescending in its re-creation of what it means to be a high-school athlete, of what a country dance hall is like, of the necking in cars and movie houses, and of the desolation that follows high-school graduation.

A hugely successful slam-bang thriller that zaps the audience with noise, speed, and brutality. It's certainly exciting, bu that excitement isn't necessarily a pleasure. The ominous music keeps tightening the screws and heating things up; the movie is like an aggravated case of New York.

Lighthearted and charming story of a black and white team of con artists in the Old South. Very enjoyable.

Despite its heroic energy and impulsive youth, it’s a bleak philosophical work of its time, a bitterly terrifying vision of no exit.

The New York-set movie doesn't tell you much you don't know. Worthy, but a drag--despite the many incidents, it feels undramatic.

In Hellman’s film, Taylor and Wilson exert a negative charisma: their presence is both powerful and blank, deeply expressive in its neutrality. They offer one of the few original post-sixties reconfigurations of the movie star. Their manner is a perfect match for the story, and for the mythic, symbolic landscape in which it’s set.

A fantasy with music for children that never finds an appropriate style; it's stilted and frenetic, like Prussians at play.