Silver City is complex and literate, but if you're looking for a political satire this season, bring your own sense of humor.
Comment
09/17/04
Silver City (2004)
48
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:124
Fresh:59
Rotten:65
Average Rating:5.5/10
Consensus: Heavy-handed and often dull.
Runtime: 2 hrs 13 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: During a gubernatorial race in small-town Colorado, a mystery is uncovered involving a dead body found in a local lake. A private detective, Danny (Danny Huston), is hired by the governor-to-be's... [More]
Starring: Danny Huston, Maria Bello, Billy Zane, Chris Cooper
Director: John Sayles
Reviews for Silver City
Silver City does seem more like the work of a nuanced novelist than of a dynamic visual and dramatic talent.
09/17/04
A film that should involve us more than it does.
09/17/04
Top CriticAside from those moments of broad satire, there's not much there there.
09/17/04
Silver City has a detective plot, important themes, clever lines and a passel of intriguing characters, but they're not put together in a way that holds your interest.
09/17/04
Sayles gets a little distracted along the way in his attempt to really nail it to Dubya, but as far as a sly look into the shadowy underbelly of politics goes, this gets our vote.
09/17/04
Top CriticA terrible disappointment.
09/17/04
Has [Sayles] ever been this cynical before, or is this simply even more vivid realism than usual? If the latter, many of his fans are likely to trudge out of Silver City feeling mighty blue.
09/17/04
Devoid of the subtlety, ambiguity, irony and complex, textured characterizations on which Sayles once staked his reputation.
09/17/04
If there's one thing Sayles has proved he's not gifted at over his long, respected career, it's comedy.
09/17/04
Silver City, as its title suggests, concerns U.S. political-corporate mythology, the "shining city on a hill" reduced to basic elements.
09/17/04
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09/17/04
Top CriticSilver City gets so tied up in underhanded plots and plot complications that it never really goes anywhere.
09/17/04
Its implications are so ploddingly obvious, you'll swear you wandered into a dank lecture room where today's topic is The Way the System Works.
09/17/04
Less a freshly hatched and cohesive pre-election polemic than a dramatically reheated survey of recurring concerns and themes from his past films.
09/17/04
Heard a good movie lately? John Sayles' Silver City is one you might try.
09/17/04
It clearly hasn't occurred to anyone to try to say something new about these issues; instead we're reassured that we're in known territory.
09/17/04
Sayles' unabashedly partisan film moseys along in an unhurried fashion, encompassing myriad story lines yet taking the trouble to fully develop each of its many characters.
09/17/04
Sayles fails to turn his Moore-like outrage over the state of the nation into entertaining or interesting fiction.
09/17/04
It wears out its welcome well before its halfway point, by which time you're either so tangled up in plot points you're strangling, or so bored you just wish you were being strangled.
09/17/04
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