50
Soon, the audience feels its own sense of despair -- for a movie that might have worked but didn't.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
There's no real artistry to this: It's as though Parker has just seen "Seven" and suffered some sort of David Fincher flashback.
50
Punches the expected buttons without being entirely convincing.
10
A new low for director Alan Parker, this trite mystery thriller does for capital punishment what his "Mississippi Burning" did for civil rights: with its muddled message, liberal piety, and slick Hollywood plot mechanics.
40
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
The film's greatest asset is Linney, whose prickly, finely calibrated performance as the doomed Harraway makes her loss resonate more powerfully than any of the point-counterpoint rhetoric.
20
Film Threat by Michael Dequina
Bad movies are easy to make, but as this overheated and self-defeating propaganda piece shows, it takes a genuinely talented group of people to come up with the most astonishing botch jobs.
50
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
By the end, it reveals itself as too pat, too absurd and -- as a polemic against capital punishment -- philosophically self- defeating.
50
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
A shock ending may be the best hope for this film, a convoluted mystery that thinks it's way smarter than it is.
40
The film doesn't have anything but bad news for Spacey fans anxious for the actor to break a stinky streak.
25
Positively reeks of self-importance -- the jokey, ham-fisted, pseudo-socially relevant, punch-pulling kind. It reeks worse of acting -- the Jack-Lemmon-in-a-coma Kevin Spacey kind.