SummaryIn this re-release of the 1970 psychological drama, a murderer on the run takes refuge with an outcast rock star.
Directed By:Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg
Written By:Donald Cammell
Performance
Metascore
Generally Favorable
69
User score
Generally Favorable
6.3
My Score
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Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
69
71% Positive
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
29% Negative
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
100
An amazing film, still a shocker after all these years. [07 Sep 2001, p.C1]
100
Uncorked in 1970, it's a shocking crime thriller, a time-capsule of Swinging 60s London and a fizzy intellectual headtrip all whisked into one astonishing film.
90
Co-directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg—the latter then a top-rank cinematographer making his directorial debut—it begins as a nasty slice of British underworld life, and ends as a psychedelic excursion into insanity.
80
Roeg's debut as a director is a virtuoso juggling act which manipulates its visual and verbal imagery so cunningly that the borderline between reality and fantasy is gradually eliminated.
63
Performance is a bizarre, disconnected attempt to link the inhabitants of two kinds of London underworlds: pop stars and gangsters. It isn’t altogether successful, largely because it tries too hard and doesn’t pace itself to let its effects sink in.
30
The film progresses by what I imagine a series of electro‐shocks to be like, but a shock treatment administered not by a therapist but by a misprogrammed computer.
30
The narrative decays more quickly than the characters.
User score
Generally Favorable
6.3
63% Positive
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
13% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
25% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
Oct 6, 2015
10
Performance is a great film for those that want to feel verve and are willing to pay the cost of nonconformity. The dialogue has got liveness and the music has soul; the attitude is rock-and-roll ("I am alive and well. You push the buttons.") The pacing is good, and goes back-and-forth with tension and play throughout, right up to a memorable climax. This is an arty kind of film, but is also challenging and edgy, with a fair amount of violence, sex, and drugs (mostly violence) in its look at what man is spiritually. The performances of Mick Jagger and Jamie Fox are very complementary, it has a naturally artificial feeling as they give each other a hard time and secretly love it (the bit where they are in bed together is pretty damn funny). This is the interesting 60s, where the setting is old but the vibe is fresh and unrestrained and un-50s.
Nov 18, 2012
3
The film is not nearly as lyrical, sustained, eccentric, or sincerely romantic as it would like to be, although there's plenty to admire. Average at best but its not my type of film,
