Clockers 1995

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: The performances are strong, but the spectator often feels adrift in an overly busy intrigue. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Helping make these points is as strong a cast as Lee has yet worked with. Read more

Entertainment Weekly: Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Clockers uses unexpected narrative turns to accentuate the themes of lost innocence and uncultivated potential, and affirms that tragic melodrama is not a prerequisite for emotional impact. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Although Clockers is, as I suggested, a murder mystery, in solving its murder, it doesn't even begin to find a solution to the system that led to the murder. That is the point. Read more

Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle: Has the strengths of Spike Lee's best work without the preachiness and gimmicky camera moves of his weakest. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: There is a force and focus in Lee's work, an absence of intellectual posturing and a willingness to let his material speak for itself that he has not achieved before. Read more

Time Out: The result is a more sober, mournful and meditative expressionism than you'd expect. That's not to say the film isn't suspenseful, but the director's distaste for the inner city's gun culture is clear to see. Superbly acted. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: A study of the urban dope-dealing culture and its toll on everyone who comes in contact with it, the picture has an insider's feel that is constantly undercut by the filmmaker's impulse to editorialize. Read more

Hal Hinson, Washington Post: What we get mostly in the film is a sense of Lee flailing, struggling to get a handle on his material. Read more

Kevin McManus, Washington Post: A real, wicked thrill. Read more