40
U-Turn is, for a while, darkly amusing. But along comes the second hour, which insults you for even partially succumbing to the first.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
The New York Times by Elvis Mitchell
However simply he approaches this familiar milieu, Mr. Stone winds up treating his story's sin-soaked connivers the way Francis Ford Coppola treated vampires. Neither of them is really capable of anything plain.
75
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Yet, although Stone has clearly made this motion picture with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, he nevertheless manages to capture all of the tension and mystery necessary to hold the viewer's interest.
70
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
The latest in an unending series of bleakly comic, nihilistic neo-noirs to reach the screen, U-Turn's story of a bad day in an Arizona hell invests a lot of skill and style in a trifling tale. So it manages to sporadically amuse even while it's wasting your time.
50
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
It demonstrates a filmmaker in complete command of his craft and with little control over his impulses.
38
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
This is a repetitive, pointless exercise in genre filmmaking--the kind of movie where you distract yourself by making a list of the sources.
78
Austin Chronicle by Russell Smith
Yet for all its unmistakable visual trademarks (hypersaturated colors; mad-scientist tinkering with film stocks and editing technique; sudden presentation of enigmatic, troubling images), this is also the most radical departure Stone has ever made in terms of basic sensibilities.
30
Washington Post by Stephen Hunter
The film has no discipline, but that's okay because it has no suspense, either.
75
San Francisco Examiner by Walter Addiego
The standard noir trappings are here: the femme fatale, double-crossing, fatalism, broken dreams, innocence betrayed and the rest of it. But Stone pushes it all so far and so relentlessly that it becomes absurdist comedy.