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United States, United Kingdom, Canada · 1995
Rated R · 1h 46m
Director Gus Van Sant
Starring Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck
Genre Drama, Comedy, Crime
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Suzanne Stone wants to be a world-famous news anchor and she is willing to do anything to get what she wants. As she pursues her goal with relentless focus, she is forced to destroy anything and anyone that may stand in her way, regardless of the ultimate cost or means necessary.
Nicole Kidman does the best work of her career in a character that seems to fit her tighter than pantyhose. Swathed in camera-friendly pastels, she's dead from the neck up (a scene with uncredited George Segal confirms that) but she's got legs like scissors, ambition like a knife, and a will of pure steel.
Delivers continuous pinpricks of irreverent humor and subversive cultural commentary.
Washington Post by Desson Thomson
Kidman grabs center stage and never relinquishes the position. Playing mercilessly against her pinup girl image, she's an unforgettable, comic archetype—a more slapsticky corollary to William Hurt's bumbling, handsome newscaster in "Broadcast News."
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
This movie is no masterpiece, but it is an electric, colorful production that roasts the media and those obsessed by it over an open flame.
Scathingly hilarious...To Die For could be the "Dr. Strangelove" of its genre, a movie that puts even John Waters' somewhat similar "Serial Mom" in the shade.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
Kidman crafts a characterization of breathtakingly controlled artifice, dead-on timing, dizzyingly precise humor. Her part is a knockout--in every sense of the word. [6 Oct 1995]
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
The murder plot is a cheap turn that says nothing about the nature of Suzanne's ambition. Without Suzanne's media-obsession as its focus, To Die For becomes just another fairly good black comedy.
Not since Tuesday Weld in "Pretty Poison" has an actress so played off her fresh-faced beauty for such pointed black-comic effect.
The cast of To Die For is perfect all around, but Kidman trumps them all with a gutsy, uncompromising performance...It's an audacious performance for a movie that dares to be nasty.
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