Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes
Mike D'Angelo, AV Club: If nothing else, this is a rare case in which a director's feature debut doubles as his greatest-hits album. Read more
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Chicago Reader: This is a near-masterpiece, and one of the most assured and accomplished debuts of the 1990s. Read more
Tom Long, Detroit News: We've seen these kids before, but we've never seen them quite like this. Read more
Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: A clinical, cool-suspicious dissection of disaffected youth maneuvering Taipei's grimier, noisier corners. Read more
Richard Brody, New Yorker: With longing gazes, antic and violent outbursts, and exquisite coincidences set amid his fetish objects-leaky pipes and bloody wounds, fast food and bathroom fixtures-Tsai depicts the city as a spontaneous, sticky, erotic ballet. Read more
A.O. Scott, New York Times: In addition to having one of the best titles ever, "Rebels of the Neon God" marks the start of one of modern cinema's great careers. Read more
Tirdad Derakhshani, Philadelphia Inquirer: A breathtaking, disturbing look at urban angst and the emptiness of youth culture ... Read more
G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle: It seems so fresh and immediate you'd never know that it's 23 years old. Read more
Tony Rayns, Time Out: No director since Fassbinder has such insight into the lives of lost young men in crumbling inner cities as Tsai Ming-Liang delivers in this devastating first feature. Read more
David Ehrlich, Time Out: Tsai's work sees generational defiance as a symptom of the ennui felt by their young subjects as they drift into adulthood, and Rebels' unusually sharp focus on that theme makes it an accessible primer. Read more
Jonathan Kiefer, Village Voice: Rebels of the Neon God inaugurates the filmmaker's multi-movie study of urban alienation not with showoff chops but quiet, enduring compassion. Read more
Mark Jenkins, Washington Post: Like Godard's "Breathless" and Wong's "As Tears Go By," "Rebels" cunningly synthesizes both B-movie and art film. Read more