40
New York Magazine (Vulture) by
It's a stilted thing--overstylized and inexpressive, like high-school kids playing dress-up, or bad Kabuki.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
The picture is a kind of fattened goose that's been stuffed with goose-liver pâté. It's overrich and fundamentally unsatisfying.
63
You've got to give the guy (De Palma) some credit. He's made a bizarre, baffling and at times flat-out bad movie. But at least it's rarely boring.
70
Although the action set pieces are impressive, the exposition is sluggish. For all the posh dollies, high angles, and Venetian-blind crisscross patterns, The Black Dahlia rarely achieves the rhapsodic (let alone the delirious).
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt
The second half feels heavy and unfulfilled, potential greatness reduced to a good movie plagued with problems.
40
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
Mr. De Palma can be a director of dazzling creative lunacy, but there's little craziness in this restrained, awkward film. With the diverting exception of Hilary Swank, who plays a slinky degenerate named Madeleine Linscott, the leads are disastrous.
38
Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips
Doesn't provoke bittersweet inquiries regarding one poor actress' grisly fate. Nor does it stir up much provocation on the matter of why, as a popular audience, we're still taken with this lurid symbol of sex and dread and desire. Rather, the movie raises a much simpler question: Huh?
67
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
The film is more than a little in love with the corruption it finds under the floorboards -- and that, of course, is perfectly dandy. I wouldn't trust a film noir that wasn't enthralled by decadence.
60
Swank's character and her performance are good enough to merit a movie of their own, instead of serving as fourth wheel to this lifeless ménage à trois.
60
"Chinatown" it ain't, not in any department. On its own level, however, new pic generates a reasonable degree of intrigue.