Critics score:
Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes
Bosley Crowther, New York Times: For all its unpleasant nature, it must be said that this film is a dynamic crime-and-punishment drama, brilliantly and broadly realized. Read more
Don Druker, Chicago Reader: A poetic, terse, beautifully exact, and highly personal re-creation of the American underworld, with an unpunctuated Joycean screenplay by Polonsky that is perhaps unique in the American cinema. Read more