Critic Reviews

Given the rather cramped capacities of his crowd, this makes Estevez a prodigy of sorts: His Wisdom isn't good, but like Estevez' work as a performer, it's never quite bad enough to write off. [5 Jan 1987, p.C1]

You’d have to stretch hard to call this movie--a young-love-on-the-run chase thriller with political undercurrents--a success. The story often lacks credibility or a mainspring; its heart sticks too hard to its sleeve. But there are compensating factors: warmth, guts, ambition.

As Wisdom (the name represents the single feeble attempt at irony), Estevez demonstrates an undeniable charisma, but in the roles of writer and director he is less successful. What initiative there is in this retread gets swamped by silliness, slackness and sentiment.

Writing, directing, and starring in WISDOM, Emilio Estevez was in over his head. It's a well-intentioned project that shows a certain promise and visual flair, but fails to come together as anything more than an expensive film-school thesis project.

Estevez has said that Wisdom is at least partly a comment on American celebrity-worship. He focuses on the media blitz that surrounds the nationwide manhunt for John Wisdom and his girlfriend, but he is merely reworking tired cliches. Like the youngsters in the dum-dum 1985 film The Legend of Billie Jean, John Wisdom is a rebel without a cause. [3 Jan 1987, p.5B]

As a thriller, Wisdom is dull; as an examination of a terrorist's psychology, it is, paradoxically, both overly detailed and unilluminating; and as a meditation on the nature of fame in America today, it is portentous in the gloomy manner of what college catalogues call an "all-night bull session." On the other hand, Moore springs to life whenever she's given a good sarcastic line to deliver. And if you stick around till the end, because your date wants to get his money's worth or whatever, there's a doozy of a car chase.

The problem is that Wisdom is aggressively boring, either because one can predict everything that's going to happen and exactly how it will look on the screen or because the concept of the film eventually seems even more confused than the title character.

Inconsistent and implausible throughout, it takes a deadly serious turn near the end and then attempts to cop out with a was-it-real-or-merely-a-dream? conclusion. Orson Welles, Emilio Estevez is not.

A dim-witted remake of the great "Bonnie and Clyde," with Estevez playing a decent young man saddled with an unfair criminal record that prevents him from getting a job. [9 Jan 1987, p.AC]