Critic Reviews

Let It Ride looks good in a low-key way, and Giorgio Moroder's eclectic, funky mood-setting score is crucial in helping maintain tone as well as pace. [21 Aug 1989]

Let It Ride looks like it was vastly overshot and overwritten, then whittled down to something which resembles a movie but is really a long commercial for the joys of the racetrack. [22 Aug 1989]

It's as beautifully acted throughout as it is photographed, and it has a quizzical tone somewhere between sociological documentary and farce. [22 Aug 1989]

Let It Ride has atmosphere, plus a good setting, appealing actors - and a bad script. [19 Aug 1989]

Joe Pytka does display an occasional nice touch with mood and atmosphere - at its infrequent best, the humor here is almost wry. But his editing is as jumpy as a mare in heat. [19 Aug 1989]

The major irritant is the hyperactive direction by Joe Pytka, a near-legendary helmer of TV commercials who films each scene as if it were the last, with everybody in the frame strenuously choreographed and overly busy.

Pytka may know how to push fizzy water, but he certainly can't make a punch line sparkle. [21 Aug 1989]

Pytka's marginally successful at setting this gambler's fantasy against the Damon Runyonesque aspects of the horsy life.

The movie is so witless and confused in tone that its seedy racetrack clientele only emerge as dim, inarticulate cartoons.